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| | Title:
NFL Head Coach
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System:
Xbox
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Genre:
Sports
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Publisher:
Electronic Arts
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Developer:
Electronic Arts
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Release:
June 20, 2006
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Online:
Yes
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ESRB:
Everyone (E)
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Ever thought about what it would be like to step into the shoes of George Halas? How about Chuck Noll? Maybe, recently you dreamed of coaching a team like Bill Cowher, and leading them to a Super Bowl win? Well, with EA studios’ Tiburon bringing NFL Head Coach to the world of sports video gaming, you’ll soon get your chance.
Kicking it like a coach
Coming off the success of the popular Madden and NFL Street series, Tiburon, a development team from EA, is looking to give gamers a 3D strategic opportunity to step into the shoes of a head coach. You’ll have to build your team from the ground up and take on all the challenges, hardships, rewards and victories that your everyday NFL coach faces.
The game will immerse players in a conversation system plus 3D menus and options that will give players the ability to take control as a head coach. You’ll be in charge of every single play your team executes on the field. Just as you’ll be in charge of every player who steps out onto field and walks back into the locker-room. You’ll be in charge of trades, conversations that take place with other officials, and even have the option of taking part in simulated NFL drafts.
The game itself takes place just after the Superbowl. It puts the player in the driver seat just before free agency begins and follows through the off-season leading up to the draft. An interesting thing about the players in the game is that over the course of each season the rankings will change according to the statistical skills of the player for that season.
Football Presentation
The draft, along with your career, is done in a way that almost emulates a T.V broadcast in 3D. It appears to give players a television presentation of everything that happens in the game. Unlike other simulators, this one will give players more focus on a visual aspect of everything that is going on from a coach’s perspective. At its base, though, NFL Head Coach is running on the Madden engine. So the actual sporting action will be handled in realtime while you coach from the sideline during the game.
The designers of the game siphoned as much information as they could from the coaches and staff of the NFL. Mainly, to try accurately to depict the job a head coach carries out in the NFL. From meeting with the owners; dealing with training new members of the team; or creating effective plays, EA’s Tiburon wanted to make sure they fit as much as they could into this title. They wanted to focus more-so on the simulated managerial aspects. They also wanted strategic field plays as opposed to moving a player around and scoring a touchdown pass with the thumbstick.
Instead of just running plays, players will be in charge of how a team trains with a specific play, or how well they adapt to various plays. Among the huge list of plays included by the Tiburon team, NFL Head Coach also features the now ubiquitous feature to every good football game, a custom playbook editor. You design where the team lines up, how the play executes and where it’ll hopefully end. Whether you focus on defensive penetration, or long passes down the stretch, you get to design exactly how your team plays it out on the field.
The game will not be a walk in the park though. It will require players to invest a lot of time into getting to know their team. Building a good squad from the ground up will require a lot of practice and tons of training. Getting to know each player on the team, and how well their strengths and weaknesses work to your advantage is something that plays a huge factor in your success. This is not about just getting the team on the field and hoping the guys with the top stats can win you the game. NFL Head Coach designers stressed the importance of strategy, and that this game is definitely for the true football fan.
Greatest coach of all time
During the multiple seasons, (supposedly each season is stretched around 20-30 hours of gameplay) players will struggle to attain a legendary status among some of the greats of football history. Depending on how you handle business out on the field and behind the desk will determine where you’ll be ranked in comparison to some of the all time greatest coaches of the NFL. It won’t be easy and it won’t be a cake walk.
According to the developers, there’s a lot of depth to the overall simulation and management aspects of NFL Head Coach. The game will follow in the footsteps of other advanced football simulators, in terms of depth and versatility. The only major difference is that the graphical presentation of Head Coach will boasts 3D environments and settings, as opposed to the text-heavy simulators most strategy gamers are used to.
The only thing EA has yet to disclose is whether there will still be injuries that’ll affect players for the rest of their career; or if team and player stats can be increased throughout the course of gameplay.
NFL Head Coach will be making its debut on the PS2, PC, and Xbox on June 30, 2006.
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