Here's more about the game...<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Well as you all know RAC and I had the opportunity to head down to EA Tiburon and check out EA Sports' new football game NFL Head Coach. We were able to play the game extensively and have a ton of impressions.First let me recap the trip and then move on to the impressions. We arrived Tuesday afternoon and by the time we got checked it was close to 6 pm. The people invited were the usual suspects from the madden communities and bert from VG sports, Packwolf from XBOX; this time Sean from OperationSports was there and a few media people from IGN and Gamespot. I'd never met Sean before and he was a pretty cool guy. That evening we all went to the ESPN Zone to meet up with a Jeremy Strauser and a couple of other EA guys. We had told ACbates we were going to be in town so he met us up there. We didn't get a chance to hang out that long since we had to talk to these people from EA for most of the dinner, but it was still nice to meet up with him nonetheless.After dinner we went back to the hotel and called it a night. The next morning we headed over to Tiburon for a presentation on the game and what to expect. We asked a ton of questions off the bat. Then from 10-4 we played the game ourselves. Each of us had an XBOX of our own so we were able to do anything we wanted. Lee Corso and Kirk Herbsteit showed up to say hello and took some pics with us. Later on Tony Dungy's son showed up. I asked him what he was doing here? and he said the owners meetings are down in orlando this week so his dad brought him down and shipped him off to EA for the day. Must be nice to have a father who has that kind of pull lol.As I've done in the past with first impression pieces, I normally do not write my impressions in a typical article. I like to mainly post my points seperately. I'll do the same thing today. First let me give some brief product description, then i'll move on to the impressions.Product Descriptiono you loe sleep questioning a head coach's call or scream at your TV booing your favorite team's draft pick? Think you can do better? Provce it with NFL Head Coach, the first ever 3D sports strategy game. Create your coach and take over an NFL franchise. Whether you're coaching from the sidelin, conducting practice, or making draft day deals to snag a future superstar, the fate of the franchise is in your hands. Delegate responsibilities to your assistants or manage every detail yourself with the easily mastered controls. How you perform depends on your football knowledge-now how fast you can push buttons. if you can develop a winning organization, your coacighin legend rises allowing you to ascend the rankings to become the greatest NFL head coach of all time. You don't have to Monday Morning quarterback any more! Unlike any sports game you have ever played before, NFL Head Coach allows you to experience the incredible highs and lows of the coaching rollercoaster with the most tru-to-life and authentic sports strategy game ever created.Key Features: * Interactive 3D Environments: Experience the life of a head coach through multiple detailed, lifelike environments and user friendly controls. Use the simple conversation system to make decisions where they happen--on the practice field, in your office, meeting room, draft war room, and at the stadium on gameday. Answer the phone and respond to your email without being removed from the vibrant 3D World * Team Preparation: make the correct draft pick based on what you learn at the scouting combine and year round scouting of your key players. Run every practice yourself or just let your assistant coaches, who you can hire and fire, do the day-to-day dirty work and head straight to gameday. * Build Coaching Status: Start you career by creating a coach and interviewing for a job. Increase your legend status by winning Super Bowls, producing Pro Bowl players, and mentoring assistant coaches. Move up in the NFL Head Coaches Hall of Legends, passing current and past coaches to become the greatest NFl head coach of all Time. * Voice-Activated Gameplay: You have the option to use your headset to call plays, receive streaming audio updates from your coordinators, and give your quarterback last second adjustments. * GameDay: Call plays from your gameplan and se your team execute with precision. Communicate with your players on the sideline during the game to change strategy or motivate them to give extra effor. Gain immediate feedback on how you handle your players. * Team War Room: Call the shots from your team's war room and watch the excitement of the draft unfold in rea-time on ESPN's NFL draft set. View scouting reports, make draft selections, call other teams and negotiate deals while your team is on the clock * NFL Films Narrative by Steve Sabol The voice of the NFL provides a running journal of career highs and lows with scripted sequences that appear as milestones are reached.More Product Features:-EA worked with EVERY NFL head coach for the game. Spent at least a half hour with all coaches. More than a half hour with a few.-Coach is full customizable. Develop your background, coaching style, and there is a Create A Coach feature thats similar to a CAP in other EA games.-Scout and Draft Players. Draft Insight with Mel Kieper JR. First year of the draft will have this years draft with insight from Kieper on all the players. Other basic stuff like sign and release players, set depth charts, etc..-Manage Gameplan and Playbooks. Create plays and full playbooks. very indepth play editor.-Set your teams practice and prep schedule. You use the real NFL calander system. Decide where to spend time to improve your team. Multiple drills available in practice mode. Run and manage every practice.-Handle players and assistant coaches with the owner of th eteam. Build trust and develop relationships. Motivate players to get the most out of the them.-Run the show from the sidelines. Call plays with the voice recognition. Line of scrimmage adjustments. Strategize and motivate on the fly.-Dynamic player ratings. Ratings adjusted and changed during game, practice, etc...-Track your career against the greatest coaches of all time. Visual scorcard with Hall of Legends. Reward sequences hosted by Steve Sabol. And the Top 25 coaches in NFL History. * George Allen * Paul Brown * Bill Cowher * Mike Ditka * Weeb ewbank * Ray Flaherty * Joe Gibbs * Sid Gillman * Bud Grant * George Halas * Mike Holmgren * Jimmy Johnson * Early Lambeau * Tom Landry * Marv Leavy * Vince Lombardi * John Madden * Chuk Noll * Dan Reeves * Marty Schott. * Mike Shanahan * Don Shula * Hank Stram * Dick Vermiel * Bill WalshOther Basic Info-Platforms: PS2, XBOX, PC. Strauser said they'd like to have this backwards compatible on 360. It's up to MS to do it, but they've already spoke with them about getting this on the list of games.-Licenses: NFL, NFLPA, Coaches Club (Head Coaches), NFLCA (assistants), Reebok, ESPN, NFL Films-Launches on June 20, 2006Impressions from the Modes:The following are impression from the "Coach Now" Mode. This mode was your basic exhibition game. YOu were able to pick any of the regular NFL headcoaches and jump right into a game. I decided to do this first since I wanted to see what the game was like right off the bat. Here are things I noticed.-Alternative Uniforms selectable like old madden-the coin toss is a little more detailed. Now the ref asks you what you want to do if such a scenario happens.-2:00 minute pre-kickoff allows you to make adjustments before the game starts. You'll need to use this. You can motivate players or tell your offense or defense what to do when they take the field.-talk to individual players or whole groups to motivate them or give them strategy. In this build you had passive or agreesive motivation. Players would reacte differently. I asked one of the producers if they were going to add more motivations because if your team made a good play or stop you couldn't really motivate them. He said they were adding "atta boys" as another optioin for this. Which basically means if your D gets an INT you can run to that guy or the defense and say "good job". I loved this feature in the game. You can talk to your team and the game is still going on behind you.-play calling screen is different that madden. Not like any game i have seen. took some getting used to.-you only hit "a" button to hike. After that everything is done for you. I found myself trying to press buttons to move my guys lol.-hit the right trigger to cycle through different screens. A lot of people seemed to like the blimp cam.-Halftime and ending is pretty bland and the same as previous games. Nothing special.-If you use the strategy correctly your team will really do what you tell them. I called a TO and called Grossman and Muhammad over. I told grossman to sell the pump fake, and i told muhammad to use his size to jump over defenders. I called an option route for Muhammad and sure enough, Grossman pump faked and tossed the ball into the corner of the endzone and Muhmmad jumped and caught it. It was beatiful. Another time i was played the Packers and Favre kept running on me. So I got pissed and called Urlacher over. I told him to hit Favre so hard he fumbles. Next play I called a blitz for him and he got through and nailed favre. Favre didn't fumble but he didn't run again after that.-Navigation menu to the lower left hand corner, a lot like NBA Live on the 360. This gives you easy access to menus and do to actions.After smacking the Packers I decided to jump into the Career mode and see what it was all about. It's a very in depth mode and something that takes time to play.-At the beginning it asks if you were an offensive or defensive coordinator. Based on what you pick, owners ask their interview questions.-opening sequence with try wingo of ESPN, and shows exact highlights from the SB using the Madden game. Randle EL's WR pass is in it. It's pretty cool although I'm sure Pasta would hate it.-interview process they ask you different situations and what you would call in those situations. Based off of all this stuff you are given your initial attributes/coaching ratings.-I said i was a def coordinator and the interview starts out with defensive situations and questions. Then it moved on to Offensive type questions. An example question was: Based off last season, which offensive player helped there team the most? Willie Anderson, Steve Smith, Peyton Manning, Shawn Alexander.-Got 5 offers for a head coching spot. All have reports with each offer and tell things such as salary/contract, key players, goals, salary cap. You can either choose to go with your favorite team or pick from the people who have offered. If teams really want you they'll offer you more money.-Must build trust with the owner/coaches or they'll leave or fire you.-Must build trust with agents. Low ball them and they have a bad relationship. I guess i "low balled' Thomas Jones agent with 3 offers i made to jones because the jerk wanted to restructure, and I noticed when I tried to get other clients of his our relationship wasn't so good.-NFL Head coach glossary in your office for easy access. Will help you if you are uncertain about what to do.-defintiely check out orientation. This will help you become familiar with the game since there is a lot to take in.-access NFL.com to view articles from the league and stats-view roster very detailed. A ton more rating categories than Madden.-presentation is different for these screens. No player pics. Takes more of a your typical sim based game.-everything done from the calendar. your schedule is all there and you can sim to certain parts of the day.-its not as easy to sign players as it is in madden. Agents will cut off negotiations with you if you try to low ball them too much.-the draft is cool. its a lot more indepth then madden. War room is a nice touch. Your assis. is with you in the war room and will give you advice.-you have meetings with your coaches. you can fire anyone at any time during this meeting. in the preview strauser gave us he was the eagles and the first guy who said hello was the O-Coordinator Marty MOrtenwheig. He fired him immediately lol.Overall the game is very in depth. I think Strauser said it best when he said the best way to describe the game is Fantasy Football and Madden Franchise on steroids. I think the hardcore franchise guys will love it. This is a game that is going to cater more to the people who are probably a bit older, those who love franchise mode, and those who want to play madden, but may not be very good on the stick (cough*bates*cough). while we were there i could tell Dungy's son was pretty bored with it. I asked him what he though and he said it was cool and he liked it, but I highly doubt it's something he'd play.It's definitely something new and something I've never played. Did I enjoy it? Yeah very much. The game had some issues but we were playing an alpha build, so it wasn't late at all to fix some of this stuff. The main problem was navigation. it was hard getting through all the menus and being allowed to do certain things only at certain times. It almost became frustrating. I got stuck during the signing of UFA period. I didnt know how to sign anyone and then my team got pissed that we didn't sign anyone. We did a Q&A session with the producers afterwards and told them this was a big concern. I believe they'll make it easy to navigate in the game before release.The main point for me is if this game will be compatible on the 360. If it isn't i'll pick it up for PC but I doubt i'll play it as much. I'll be curious to see if people will play this even after Madden 07 comes out. I know its going to be tough for me to play this once 07 drops becaue i've never been a big franchise guy. I'm more of an online player. Maybe something like this will get me more into franchise. This is all for now, feel free to ask any questions. I know rac got pages of info, so I'm sure he'll add more stuff than I did.</div>http://www.maddennation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52755
I wanted to get it, but now I have a 360. I could still get it and just use it on my 360, but I doubt i'll do that.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bobferg @ Apr 2 2006, 06:17 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>I don't think I will buy another game untill this and NCAA 2007 come out. I can't wait.</div>Me to, I only play Madden and NCAA. I think this will be the last year I get NCAA and Madden for my PS2. After that I will look to PS3.
I basically play madden for the offseasons lol. I like to be the coach and make a difference to the franchise and not play it. Besides playing it is too easy.
