Head Coach Break
I need to take a HC break due to other work stuff but after last night’s 6 hour session and playing it most of the morning I just think this is a super cool idea that is poorly executed.
The devil is in the details when it comes to games like this and the more you look at what’s going on the more you feel as if you’re playing in bizarro-world.
The draft AI is just plain goofy. Hawk goes #1, Bush #12, Young #20, Santonio Holmes #9 to the Lions (who need every wide out in the league I guess). I know the game doesn’t know it’s Bush, but his ratings are very very good…and he goes #12.
On draft day you get like 30 seconds to contact a team to work a trade. 30 seconds. Good luck. At least you get 5 mins to make your pick. The scout system is really neat, but again, the draft execution is just plain poor.
Training camp is a GREAT idea, getting your team ready and learning specific plays (I also like the play designer) — problem is that if you manually do camp your players go WAY up in ratings. I finished camp and the Browns were ready to win the Super Bowl. If you SIM parts of camp, your players take a ratings hit, at least mine did. I ended camp with nearly every starter listed in green (meaning an 80+ rating) even 36 year old vets saw their ratings skyrocket. Sorry, but that’s batshit crazy.
Trade AI isn’t too bad, really. I landed Rivers from SD for a 2nd round pick, which sounds crazy but Rivers’ ratings were not very good at the time. Of course after camp he was Kosar-incarnate, but still..
The 5 minute game clock is a problem for me. I get about 90 plays per game which is about 30 shy of what a real NFL game is, on average. The real issue is clock management. The CPU sees 2:00 as being the real 2 minute warning, which of course it isn’t. It starts burning time outs way before it needs to. The killers in terms of the games are the crazy number of INTs (in the 3 games I played I saw 8 INTs on average per game), the fact that there are next to no penalties called (I get called for clipping on an off-tackle running play, which I’d LOVE to see…) and the CPU playcalling is just plain broken.
Here’s what I mean: Browns 17 Eagles 14, :55 secs to go, Philly at midfield w/o any timeouts. They call a run. Hmm, ok, maybe trying to catch me off guard? No gain. They come back, call a toss sweep to Westbrook, who gets 5 and stays in bounds. :20 secs to go, they run a HB screen for no 4 yards. 4th and 1 at the Browns 41 with about :08 to play and they finally call a deep pass, which is picked off. Game over. Back to OOTP and PureSim.
Friggin EA Sports…