Still, there's a good, solid foundation for a better future rooted in Head Coach's design, and as a first stab at the genre, it gets more right than it does wrong.įinally, the armchair coach in all of us is given its chance to shine in NFL Head Coach.
Too little freedom and too much busywork often combine to make the flow of the game overly sluggish, and the on-field action isn't nearly as exciting or enjoyable as you'd hope. While all of this sounds wonderful on paper, Head Coach isn't quite a smashing success. From the off-season to the Super Bowl, you'll be dictating everything from practice schedules to contract negotiations, and you can even call the plays in an on-field simulation using the Madden engine. Of course, hardcore fans aren't necessarily satiated by such casual fare, and now EA is out to prove it can play the management game, too, in NFL Head Coach, a deep, involving management sim that puts you in charge of practically every aspect of a team's operation.
Some of the more dedicated sports fans have taken to any of the assorted menu-based managers available for the PC, and in Europe, multiple publishers have turned their popular soccer franchises into successful management simulations on both the PC and consoles, but over here, most fans have been satisfied with a new franchise mode in Madden every year, and little else. Sports-management simulations aren't exactly a hot item among North American audiences these days.
