Head Coach Pt 2
It would seem that the games are in fact set to 5 min. quarters w/o the ability to change it. This was my experience with playing an Exhibition game between the Browns and 49ers. Maybe you can change it when starting youir “career” but a default game is set in stone at 5 mins…which eternally sucks. Why not allow the 15 min accelerated clock? It’s a COACHING GAME!
Anyway, my first impression was watching Alex Smith run an 80 yard TD scramble on the first play of the game. After that, it honestly felt like I was playing Madden 2005 in coach mode but with the ability to “motivate” my players by giving pep talks. The game engine is pure Madden. No doubt. Is that good or bad? Well I’ll leave that up to you. For a coach game I’d like to have a better interface but remember this game was designed for the consoles so we’re stuck with a console interface. Now, I’d like to meet the guy that wants to play a coaching/sim game on the Xbox over playing it on the PC, but that’s neither here nor there. It is what it is.
There’s a lot of “stuff” involved in creating your coach and accepting a position as head coach. There really is a lot of info here — and yet I can’t play a 15 minute quarter game. I really, really, don’t get that at all. And, just like Madden’s AI, it sees 1:00 left in the half/game as if it were a REAL 1:00 when of course it is not. In Madden, 1:00 to play (hell it’s 1/5 of a quarter, so it’s basically like having 3 mins to play) is an eternity and yet the AI takes a knee on its own 20 with 1:00 until halftime. Of course I call three fast timeouts and get the ball in great field position with :47 secs to play. Nice.
Anyway, my first impression is pretty much what I expected it to be. Granted, it’s a first impressiom but I think anyone that expected Front Office Football with graphics, well, you’re a dolt to think that in the first place.
June 20th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
The scrambling is troubling because I saw a lot of that in the demo. Once in a while is fine, but there were three plays in a row where Roethlisberger scrambled without being under real pressure.
Guess it was too much to hope for FOF with prettier play-by-play. I actually like Madden a lot, but for a coaching game I wanted a more realistic experience. I won’t write it off yet but it doesn’t sound good.