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NFL Head Coach | 
| From: EA Sports
Category: Video Games
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $3.22
You Save: $16.77 (84%)
New (10) Used (9) from $3.22
Avg. Customer Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 6226
Format: Cd-rom
Platform: Windows Xp
ESRB: Rating Pending
Media: CD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Operating System: Windows XP
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 1.1
MPN: 100722
UPC: 014633151350
EAN: 0014633151350
ASIN: B000E1B2SO
Release Date: June 20, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: New - Shrink Wrapped with Factory Seal, Shipped within 1 business day, emailed confirmation
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| Features:
| • | Develop a winning team strategy, then execute it successfully on and off the field | | • | Control your team and make the right decisions behind the desk, on the practice field, or on game days | | • | A simple conversation system and an engaging 3D graphical interface lets you experience the real day-to-day life of an NFL head coach | | • | Your status as a coaching legend will rise and fall, as you strive to become the greatest head coach of all time |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
NFL Head Coach is for the hardcore football fan who tells himself that if he were in charge of the team, he'd take them all the way to the Super Bowl. It's got the strategy and realism that real fans crave, combined with easy-to-use controls and assistance for more casual fans. It's the first 3D strategy sports game that challenges you to build and manage every aspect of a football team, from the ground up. Try to build a winning organization, year after year!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 NFL Head Coach: First release PC edition. January 4, 2009
Even though this is an EA Sports Football game and even uses some cut screens from the Madden series, this *isn't* a game where the user directly controls the action on the field. Instead, the user acts as a coach to teach and motivate players to perform on the field.br /br /One look at the available videos accessed through the main menu tells you that the objective of the game isn't just racking up a great win-loss record. "Sabol Moments" accessed through the extras bar on the main menu include not only "First Super Bowl Win" and "Back to Back Championships" but also "3 Super Bowl Wins," "4 Super Bowl Wins," and "4th Consecutive SB." Oh, and if that doesn't tip you off that the point isn't just being able to win a lot of games, maybe "1 Undefeated Season" and "2nd Undefeated Season" puts it in perspective.br /br /So the ultimate point ISN'T about just winning games. In fact, the game EXPECTS you to win games. Instead, the goal of the game is to become the greatest NFL head coach of all time. This means you have to win championships, certainly. But it also means you have to extend a lineage of coaches who follow in your footsteps. This is much, much more difficult than just winning games on Sunday.br /br /Another task you will want to accomplish along the way is to fill your trophy case. There are nine cubbies in the case, and these are for the easy tasks (First Win), the "mundane" expectancies (Best Offense/Defense, AFC and NFC Conference Championships, Lombardi Trophies), and the hardest to accomplish awards (Coach of the Year, Comeback Coach of the Year, and Continuous Service).br /br /This indicates that the best coach will not only win, but rebuild from *losing* seasons, coach for multiple teams (not just their favorite) in both conferences, and coach for one team for several seasons.br /br /While the job offers include monetary incentives, earning money plays no part in the game and can be ignored. It's all about achievements on the field. br /br /PROS:br /It's a different concept that is more mentally challenging than just knowing which plays to call at what times and clock management. The user is developing his own character as well as players, coordinators, and position coaches. Even though the coach has weekly and seasonal goals, winning the game means being focused on multi-season and long-term goals. br /br /CONS:br /There is no instruction booklet to explain anything and the ingame tutorial aids are worthless to anyone other than someone who knows nothing about football. There are some aspects which are intended to be "intuitive" but aren't. The first time you go into the Hall of Champions or navigate into your trophy case, don't be surprised if you get stuck there. Remember: Backspace, [, and Enter.br /br /The game can become tedious. Practice schedules are repititious...just like real life. While they can be simmed over, this increases the likelihood of player injuries (which unrealistically don't occur in supervised practices) and lowers the coach's Work Ethic attribute...resulting in less productivity per task.br /br /There are a lot of little glitches in the game. The problem is that these glitches undermine the "value-adds" of the game. Some players names are announced wrong. Accessing "NFL.com" during office hours is how you keep up on your team rankings and player stats, but don't bother clicking on the stories. The top story is an undetailed blurb already covered by the headline and the bottom story, especially when it is about the history of the game, doesn't always match up with the headline. br /br /Beyond the glitches, there are flat out deficiencies that should have been developed better. I think the greatest disappointment is the graphics animations. No gang tackling. Forget about trying to see if receivers got both feet inbounds on replays (some look both in and are called out, some look both out and are called in). Fumbles caused by the ground are another issue. Where a player is actually ruled down? Anyone's guess. And watching a replay of a fumble recovery looks like a bunch of guys stumbling around with invisible pumpkins in their hands.br /br /You can't do anything with special teams. No play designing. No practicing. You can't even involve a kicker in a trade with another team...only release yours and sign a free agent.br /br /You can design 10 offensive and 10 defensive custom plays. This is a nice feature. But you can't make unbalanced lines or wildcat formations. Some plays, such as reverses, screens, and flea-flickers don't have the logic available in the customizing screens and don't work if you move a player...even if it's just a minor adjustment such as offsetting the FB. On offense, not all the receiver routes are available for custom plays (such as Cover 2 Corner) and you can't make a customized route. On defense, no all of the stunts and twists are available...just left, right, or up the middle. Zone coverages are vague (and there's a glitch on the deep curl zone). In games, LBs given a zone or QB spy assignment tend to blitz instead. And the biggest problem is you can't set key/read assignments (read RB1, if to cover RB1, if away cover gap/zone X). Sound complex? I used to play a game made in 1996 that managed to include that level of logic in its play designer. br /br /Everything gets cleared out weekly, which is annoying when you have a player with high attributes in the principle areas for the position, but the position coach always wants to put a player with a higher overall above him in the depth chart. (There's a major glitch with the depth chart, by the way, where a player sometimes takes up two slots.) It's also annoying to give the same strategy week after week for blocking assignments on plays. That's why practices become so tedious.br /br /In the game, penalties and interceptions are reminiscent of JV-level play and not pro. Facemask, holding, and pass interference penalties are the most common. Moreover, the game doesn't address some rules accurately...everything from onside kicks that don't go 10 yards (which is anyone's guess who the heck is going to be awarded the ball, regardless of which team recovers) to no ability to free kick after a fair catch. Then there's the roster (55 instead of 53) with no practice squad and no inactives.br /br /Even the funnest part of the game, preparing for the draft, has its issues. You can't make trades for draft picks during the season, you can't have more than 10 total picks in the draft, and it's waaaaay to easy to get multiple first-round picks (like 3, 4, or more) and even get all 10 of your picks in the first 3 rounds. The game starts with the Reggie Bush draft (he usually doesn't go until 9th or so). After that, the draft classes are random. That is, there are 20 years of draft classes and these are cycled randomly. I've started several careers since I bought the game a couple years ago, and the draft classes haven't cycled the same yet.br /br /So, you might ask, if the game has so many glitches, why the heck should I bother? I can only answer for myself. The long-term goals and challenge to become the #1 HC of all time, the drafts, filling my trophy case, and unlocking all the Sabol Moments videos are the fun part of the game for me.br /br /As for the events that occur every Sunday? Well, when I go a whole season without scoring less than 65 points in any game...including multiple 100+ point games in a season, you can see that that isn't much of a challenge. It's all about getting the players their stats so they will develop.br /br /This game isn't about the games.
 Very Disappointed April 11, 2007
I was really looking forward to this game. I have several text football simulations that I enjoy playing. I enjoy running the GM functions and picking the plays to see what happens. I like making the trades and building my teams. This game isn't that. It is more an exercise in tedium. The interface is clunky and hard to get it to do what you want. It is buggy when you work hard to ready players each week to have it bug out and return to zero readiness. If you could combine the view of plays like in Madden with some of the good text simulations, you could have a great game. This is just a mess.
This game is terrible. It seems like a lot of fun, UNTIL ... February 2, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This game has a lot going for it inside the box. Even after you install it and start the game, the premonition of fun filled simulation gaming goes down the tube when you realize how buggy this game is. DO NOT purchase this game. Madden football games are GREAT! This game is not. Even if it is 180 from Madden style gaming and puts you in the coaches seat - it STILL had bugs.br /br /This game will never be reproduced, upgraded or continued by EA Sports. What a complete failure.br /br /So much potential ruined by common game play bugs.br /br /My biggest complaint is not the fact it may take hours on hours to play one game - that can be fun if you enjoy simulation type games. The prob is when you actually take the field as a coach. Your hands get tied behind your back and you have limited coaching ability on the field!? Uh...isn't this "NFL Head Coach", not "NFL GM"?br /br /And besides the fact there are bugs that limit reality in the game - there are programming bugs which crash the game half the time. Your computer will not crash and freeze up - but you will get stuck in a dead end in the game and find it useless to continue. The 0-0 bug (which is NOT simply fixed by reducing your roster size as EA claims), the Wrong Team bug (where you suddenly are the coach of another team when game day arrives). Then there is the statistics problem. It's not really a bug, but when does someone like Brett Farve throw 10 interceptions in 4 games and have a 50.0 passer rating? c'mon? Or Mark Brunnell - I know he's a bit old...but 20 interceptions in 8 games with 20.9 passer rating!? get real.br /br /Safe your life from misery. Don't buy this game. As someone noted in an earlier review - EA seemed to rush their release and not play test this game when it came out a year or so ago.br /br /Sad.
An gaming atrocity January 18, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have played many football GM simulators in the past, and was really looking foward to this game. I have to say that this is the first computer program that has ever outraged me due to it being an overall terribly put together piece of software.br /br /I gave this program a big chance, but after reaching game three of the regular season, I just got so fed up, I uninstalled it and threw away the CDs.br /br /Let's have some examples of how bad this game is, shall we?br /br /1) BUG: When I tried to "motivate" my players in practice, the menus wouldn't come back, and I'd have to close the program and restart from whenver the autosave last saved. EA said it was the video card on my machine, so I tried it on another machine. Same problem. Seems to me a menu not reappearing has nothing to do with my graphics card. I had the patch already installed.br /br /2) BUG: In the middle of an interview I just got suddenly exited out of the practice. The fellow I interviewed was acting like I hired him, but I couldn't hire him. Very odd.br /br /3) BUG: Players on routes would always run out of bounds in the endzone, even for supposed goal line plays.'br /br /4) GM GAMEPLAY: Practices improve certain aspects of your players. But what to do to make them better? Who knows. For "attribute" practices I just randomly ran plays and eventually everybody got better.br /br /5) GM GAMEPLAY: If I simmed past the practices, then it was like the practices didn't occur, and all the coaches were all pissy about the players being unprepared. So what was going on during all that simming?br /br /6) GM GAMEPLAY: The whole calender thing is unbareably tedious, and unrealistic. I can't explain it, but its real bad. Heck, just by reading the comments by other people, lots couldn't figure out how to change your schedule to do something not preplanned. I could keep going on about this but the coaching stuff deserves most of the attention.br /br /7) PLAY DESIGN: Boy I wish I could've tested my plays I designed, but what really bugged me was if you pressed left or right on the designer, you wouldn't get the player to your left or right, it would be somebody else! Made no sense, and discouraged me from creating plays.br /br /8) COACHING GAMEPLAY: All seven games I played I won by LARGE margins. Only got scored on in two. The AI sucks. Nobody should be that good at a game once they begin. Plus I was on a crappy team, and I just stopped practicing after a while.br /br /9) COACHING GAMEPLAY: Dude, prepare for some interceptions. I pretty much threw 30% of the time, mostly short stuff. But the computer kept throwing, and my DBs had tons of interceptions each game. Not realistic.br /br /10) COACHING GAMEPLAY: Speaking about off stats, I pretty much blitzed every play. I would routinely get 7 sacks a game, and a lot more tackles for a loss. Meanwhile I am still getting a ton of interceptions.br /br /11) COACHING GAMPEPLAY: You call this a Sim! If I change my view to blimp view all the sudden both quaterbacks would throw nothing but incompletes. So basically on defense I could switch to blimp view, and on offense the classic view. In the entire time on blimp view there was only one complete pass and one an interception. At least the number of interceptions was cut down.br /br /12) COACHING GAMEPLAY: Who's that player: You want somebody to motion or something, but none of the camera angles can show you which receiver is lined up on the sides. Just have to guess.br /br /I really could go on forever. There are a lot more bugs, bad interfaces, and poor simulations.br /br /DO NOT BUY THIS GAME
 Tedious... January 9, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I enjoy the essence of this game, but find it to be very time consuming and tedious. Once you get into getting hired, it is good for awhile and then you have office hours 3x a day and it gets long. If you have much time to play, then this is a great game. Maybe after I begin the season things will get faster...
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