NFL Head Coach 09 Reviews

You too can be an NFL Head Coach! Exciting stuff, huh?

Salary caps, signing players under the cap, restructuring deals under the salary cap, cutting players to resign better players to fit under the cap... if this sounds like your sort of thing... this game is for you!!

NFL Head Coach 09 puts you in the shoes of... that's right, an NFL head coach! Except that it seems a lot of what you do is what a general manager does... signing players, cutting players, etc., all while trying to maintain the all-important Approval Rating that sits in the bottom right-hand corner of the game at all times.

I'll say this now... the only reason I have this game is because it came free with my special edition of Madden 09. The "game" (if one can call it that) is tedious. You spend a lot of time during the weeks dealing with the monotony of bureaucracy. Checking health and fatigue, getting the players to practice a particular play so they can learn it 2% better than before... ugh. I felt like I was in the Line Ride from South Park. It was about that much fun.

Shenanigans! But I'll be damned if I don't get those GS points. Sick, huh? And those aren't easy. A lot of them are based on having high approval ratings, which is difficult because your teams seems to want to lose whenever possible, which means you'll be reloading whenever you sim a loss to get those 3 straight Super Bowls. Frustrating as all get out. And good luck finding someone to play online for the Gameday Guru one: 50 GS just for playing... they give so many because no one's there to play!

The AI is also terrible. If you sim through weeks, you'll realize later that the AI made terrible (or worse, no) decisions on your behalf, and now you can't fix them. You could easily find yourself without your good players, or on an 0-16 team. Well, quit and find a new one! But then what's the point of simming?

And the interface... it doesn't seem to make sense. What I'm looking for is never where I expect it to be, and when I find it, I can't always do what I want. Why can't I cut a player from the same screen where I can look at his potential and his salary cap status at the same time? Why do I have to go to a different screen to cut him? Why can't I find where to hire and fire my staff, even though the factoids during the loading screen give me pointers on that?

Speaking of loading-screen factoids, did you know that Mathias Kiwanuka is the grandson of the very first Prime Minister of Uganda? Me neither... but I have no clue what that has to do with football!

That's not to say it doesn't have it's moments... I just can't seem to find where they are. On the other hand, I know some people are really into this kind of simulation where you can take control of every aspect of a club and hone it into a finely-tuned machine. To me, that feels like too much work for a "game".

The game is confusing at times, too. There are "Defining Moments" in the actual games (where, if you're like me, you won't spend much time because you'd rather be playing Madden where you can actually control the players). These Defining Moments are points in the game where you're given a choice and, based on the outcome, you could gain/lose approval. What confuses me is that even if you pick a play that seems to have the right effect (we forced an incompletion on 3rd down!!) I still made the "wrong" decision. HUH??

You're also given the ability to react emotionally or calmly during key moments of a game. However, which one is "right" seemed to be totally random.

In short, I just don't get the game. That's why I spent a lot of time simming it. Like I said, I'm sure there are people out there who would like this, but I'm just not one of them.

This is the NFL game I have played the most and surprisingly, enjoyed the most. Oh, not the salary cap/owner stuff...but building a team, practicing, calling plays, it's strategy and it's enjoyable. You may skip over the draft or whatever offseason thing you don't want to bother with (after getting your achievements of course) and then go on to playing seasons. Sort your players, pick up some guys on the cheap, win baby win. This is not the best game if you like arcade action or even Madden style action. But I had fun and liked going for the "Decider" moments. Not for everybody for sure, but for some, you are going to love this.

If you're reading this, chances are you're not thinking about buying the game.... If that makes any sense.

NFL Head Coach 09 was a disappointment. The graphics aren't very good, the gameplay isn't all that interesting and the only reason someone would buy it is if they want some extra gamerpoints added to their total.

My first impression on the game was that it was a small game. By small, I mean that there isn't much content or game modes on this game. The Coach Now mode is pretty boring unless you're really into controlling the plays instead of the players. The Career mode is just simulating most of the time unless you have the patience to actually coach all the games. The Create-a-play feature isn't really necessary as most of the user-created plays don't work all that well in the games, and the online community is DEAD, not that it would be any better playing online in the first place.

If you don't mind simulating for some decent gamerpoints and you think that's worth buying the game, then by all means do so. You'd get more gamerpoints though by just buying NBA 2K6 or Fight Night Round 3 which are both more worth buying than this game.