No announcers.

It's okay so far as I can see. The one thing I can definitely confirm is that it's not like the previous version of Head Coach. That being said, I'm not sure how fun it is since I started in the offseason and it just seemed like it dragged a lot.

I've just played some "coach now" game thus far and I'm loving every minute of it.

Just played Farve and the Jets and beat them 31-21, it was a great game! Holt caught a 47 yard TD and when he was almost in the endzone he started pointing to the DB.. kind of neat little animation.

Anyhow.. there are some slowdowns at various points during the game and I hate the fact you can't change the play during the 2 min no huddle.. but it defnitely has that FPS Football 2008 feel to it so far.

Oh, and plenty of penalties, neat injury reports, etc.. to really engross you into the game. I like the overhead cam for the most part. Stats seem great and the accelerated play clock makes the number of plays spot on.

Can't wait until the weekend when I really get to start my career, how ever long it may be, as the HC of the Rams.

This is officially killing me to wait for this game.

It was shipped yesterday to me, should be here in 3 days, can't wait!!

The Madden CE was worth the $90 to me. I like madden to play against someone, or just a pick up game of football. But HC is where it is at for single player. I will easily get my moneys worth just for HC. Stats might be a little out of wack, but that will not ruin the game for me. I will get hours andhours of enjoyment from HC.

Quick Impressions:
(I played for a couple of hours starting a new career with the Panthers last night and got about 2/3 of the way through FA but not to the draft yet)

- I like the interface alot nicely laid out and easy to navigate
- I like that they bring everything to you on the clipboard for the most part without you having to go search for things (this took a little adjustment from what I am used to)
- I like how you can delegate certain tasks to your coaches and GM - though I have not done this yet
- With my 39 inch plasma I am a little dissapointed in the text size for some of the screens as they seem to be just a little bit too small for me not to have to really squint or adjust my eyes to view it (these are mostly the names on the clipboard, text on the help screens, etc)
- I like the rookie scouting mechanisms (senior bowl, pro-days, combine) I just wish marty hurney was a better GM so I could scout more of the guys...
- I entered this game as a test of sorts so I am learning that going a bit willy nilly through the different tasks is not advisable you really need to develop a game plan for who you want and which positions need an upgrade
- My owners goals were to upgrade my RT, LG, and TE to at least and 85... I like those goals but I will probably take a hit on the TE task since I really don't like any of the >85 options out there (LJ Smith)

For those of you with the game I have a question about the FA bidding wars:
I some how ended up with 2 stud FS's through free agency - one I signed myself by winning the bidding war and negotiating his contract myself... The other seemingly showed up on his own (thought it was late last night)...
What I want to know is when the option for the bidding war pops up on your clipboard does hitting "B" to "dismiss" leave the option to your GM or does it indicate that I am not interested... Or if I want to not sign the player do I need to select the bidding war from my clipboard and then dismiss it from that screen???

Stupid question... where's the highlight dvd? I looked through the box and can't find it. I only see 2 discs and the instructions. Granted, it was 1 AM in the morning and I was falling asleep, but one would think I would be able to find it.

I have it on the PS3 and here's how this goes down for me. :)

When the FA pops up in the Clipboard, you hit 'X' to see the player or hit 'O' to dismiss it. When you hit 'X', you get a window that shows you the player and you have 2 options, Join the FA bidding on the guys or Dismiss it.

If you Dismiss it, he goes away just like if you had dismissed from the clipboard.

If you Join, you go to a screen where teams are bidding on the the rights to negotiate a contract with the player. Teams continue to bid until time runs out, I think it is 2 minutes. Once time runs out and you are the high bidder, you then go to the contract negotiation screen.

I don't know how you managed to sign the 2nd FS without going all of the way through this process. I think you would have to.

I only have 2 disks. It is likely on one of the disks.

I got the CE for the PS3 yesterday strictly to play HC.

I fired it up and created a new coach. The process of creating your coach is fairly deep I'd say. You start out giving him a First and Last name and picking what he's going to look like. I know one thing, all of the choices are ugly sons o' bitches! :)

After that, you get to pick an overall trait.The choices range from being a Ego-maniac, Bill Parcells type (no sympathy for players). If you guys want, I will do a little more research into the choices here. My memory is failing me with this.

After that, you 'build' your coach. You start out with a certain number of points (40,000, I think). You use these points to give your coach skills. You have 'normal' skills and special skills.

Some of the normal skills effect Team Chemistry, How well the players respond to you. You can have your coach benefit player development for any of the positions. These normal skills have 5 levels and you start with level 1 in all of them. Each level costs more than the level before. So, for example, if level 2 is 3500 points, then level 3 will be 5000 or 6000.

The very first special skill on the screen costs 10,000 points. It reduce the cost of all other special skills by 15%. Some of the special skills are you can increase the time it takes for your players to unlearn the playbook during the season or during the off season. OL that play for you run block better or pass block better. Runningbacks run better. Things like that.

I did most of this from memory. So, some of the information isn't too detailed. :)

When I have time later today, I will go over the Draft if no one else has talked about it. It is pretty cool.

You guys just talked me into getting HC...when is it coming out stand alone?

Fun game. About 4 hours into it. My quick two cents is that it offers a lot of the components (not all) that I like about text-based sims but then adds in the incredibly fun dynamic of coaching in real time.

My first offseason and draft was more enjoyable and deeper than FOF. I did not like the fact that you have to decline to participate in the bidding process for every free agent on the market. Tedious but tolerable. There may be some way to address this issue but I am not aware of it.

Not a perfect game but a very good first impression.

So when you dismiss from the clipboard that is the same as going to the next screen and hitting "dismiss" (rather than "enter bidding war")...

It was late... I guess I just made the mistake of bidding on both but I sure don't remember that...

I don't think you have to decline for every player. When it shows up on your clip board, there is a timer bar, so I guess you don't have to decline each one. I know it goes much faster if you decline them. I ended up declining my way through a lot of them to speed things up.

September 2nd, 2008 is the stand-alone release date. There's also a pretty good feature list on the Wiki page............

NFL Head Coach 09 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If there's anything that eventually gets me to buy this game down the road, that is it.

The actual draft was fun for me. Teams moving up and down. Receiving offers from other teams while you're on the clock adds a dynamic that feels very real to me. It remains to be seen how equitable the trading turns out to be but at first blush it seems ok.

I might not sleep at all this weekend.

The game was well designed (with the exception of 1 major gameplay design decision), and the draft is nearly perfectly designed. I had more fun during the draft than my first preseason game.

The designer did a good job overhauling the overall feel and interface of the game.

Where the game falls short is on the field, mainly because it uses the Madden 08 engine. There are way too many fumbles, the animations are jerky, and the buttons are not very responsive (only when on the field). It is hard to follow who the current ball carrier is, or even who is on the field.

Also, the accelerated clock is turned off in the final 2 minutes of the first half, and the last 5 minutes of the 2nd half, so you are actually getting too many plays for a game. You can't just switch to 14 minute quarters, because accelerated clock automatically turns off if you switch from the default of 15 - so you will have to play with 7/8 minute quartes to get realistic # of plays.

Overall, I'd give the game about an 8, which is a big improvement over the last game (which I would have given a 4). There are some moderate bugs in the game, that hopefully will be fixed in a patch.

Impressions have been positive enough for me on every website that I read, that I'll be buying this as soon as it is released as a stand alone game.

I agree. Wish I could buy it now.

Anyone who has progressed a few weeks at least, how often do you receive skill points? Basically I'm trying to figure out how far into the game I'll have to be before the "Ambition" special skill might pay for itself, whether I should buy it now or a bit later.

which just proves that if it's not a joystick jockey game, most folks don't want to hear about it

The Game Informer review intrigues me about the game more. Sounds like a couple of joystick jockeys -- they're complaining about things that have been in Madden for years, then wants in-game quizzes like NCAA, which I find to be very girlie.

Great, now I'm going to have to decide between XBOX360/PS3 sooner than I had anticipated. Grr.

If you go to gamerankings, each review that is up is a terrible review but can't be read until 9/1. I take it as people who would never play this type of game.

Some early impressions (I'm 8 games into a season with the Lions, started in the offseason)

Pros -

100x better interface, I'd give the interface about a 8. It's about as good as it can be considering it's meant to be played with a controller instead of a keyboard/mouse. The ingame interface isn't quite as fluid, but it doesn't affect enjoyment much once you get use to the slight 'hitch' to load the screens in game.

The game is deep. RFA's with 4 or 5 tender levels, contract incenitives, player personalities, weekly practices that are useful and not daunting, play book knowledge with each individual player having there own knowledge ratings, coaching staff with each position coach represented including a trainer and GM that can be hired/fired also all with their own individual skills that can be trained up and tons of other stuff.

Game 'defining' moments that pop up on tough decisions during a game (do you go for it on 4th and 1 down by a touchdown and gain fan support, media support ect (or lose it if you fail) or punt and guarantee a loss of support that you don't get back if you don't win).

It's simply alot of fun having a full 3D representation of your game.

Deep draft scouting done in the off season and during the season but again, it doesn't feel daunting. (For example, one of the ways I've seen scouting done during the season is you pick what level of schools you want to scout (big, mid, low), and what position then it scouts that level of school at that position a certain %, so when the college player report comes out, you'll see that all the QBs from the top schools are 75% scouted (thus giving you info on traits,skills, durability ect) while all the others are only 33%.)

Players come from college with full personalities, and body damage from college. Neat stuff.

There are alot of other things but...

Cons -

The gameplay has some 'madden' flaws. Too many fumbles. Interceptions aren't too bad at all (plus I think it's tweakable) but there seems to be a high number of INTs returned for TDs. As with any game, there will be some frustration with the visuals not always matching up with what looks like should have happen (such as clipping, ball traveling thru players on replay ect)

Coaching playbook takes some time to get use to, it's laid in a straight down scroll format instead of a book layout like madden.

Sound isn't anything to get excited over. At times it seems delayed, with the sound of players calling time out being played during the next play (doesn't affect actual gameplay though)

Some repetitiveness. There is some use of small videos in the corner of the screen (gm asking what you want to do for practice, coordinator during game making comments) after about 4 or 5 games you've heard about everything the coordinators are going to say during the game, and know what the gm is going to say everytime.

- All in all, the gameplay flaws are the only ones that really bother me. Even those, I could see myself overlooking if I really had to, or finding some sliders to tweak things. Although I don't think fumbles can be fixed by sliders. Beyond that, everything isn't perfect but this is the closest thing I've found to what I'm looking for since FOF and it does some things better.

I thought the 15 seasons would really be a hangup, and it still may end up being in the long run due to being attached to a certain team by end but so far I think that if I coach every game, and play seriously by the time I'm at the end of the 15 seasons, I'll have put in atleast over 60-100 hours which is more than most games offer for their main modes.

I think it really depends on how hardcore you are about accuracy, and what you're willing to trade off. It is spot on when it comes to managing an NFL team, and coaching it. It has some 'arcade' touches to it when it comes to gameplay and stats/scores (from what I've seen so far). Personally, if the fumbles are fixed, and some gameplay tweaks - I'm willing to overlook the madden/arcade-esque stuff.

Custom plays ruin the game.

I made a play that I have 2 LB's blitzing and Mario Williams stunting. I then have 4 guys in man with a SS playing mid field zone.

I played the Steelers in the first game. If I would of ran that play the entire game, I would of shut them out. It was ugly. I crushed their run 80% of the time and caused five fumbles with it.

Then on pass plays, it was hit or miss. I sacked them a few times, had a pick and quite a few pass defends, but they did complete about 5 passes for 10ish yards a pop on it.

I'm making a house rule of no, human made plays. Well at least of that nature and it might not be so bad.

But, I was having so much fun with this game untill that.

I am loving this game, it has its flaws but what game does not. I lost a game last night because the 2 min drill is messed up had no time outs had a chance to tie with 10 secs left on the clock and could not stop the ball to kick FG. I just had to laugh, even though I was frustrated, I just laughed it off (it is a video game, is what I said to myself). This game is way more polished then Madden. The only thing I wish, that there would be more than 15 seasons, only complaint I have with it. Hopefully there will be another version that extends that.

If you have the PS3 version, I believe there is no highlight DVD. Because it's Blu-Ray, they put the highlights on one of the other DVDs...I believe the Madden disc.

Crazy solution.....don't play with the custom plays.

Yeah, I said that in my post. :)

So you did. I apologize. Just something that has bugged me lately with these games and everyone finding flaws in them. Some of them are so easy to not have happen and yet people feel they're gamebreakers. All you have to do is choose not to abuse it, choose not to run that play, etc.

Don't forget, there are sliders!

I think I'm going to start my coaching career tonight.

Head over and read the injury bug workaround/avoidance: The Nut and the Feisty Weasel

One thing not to do: Try to implement the wishbone. Could be that the players just need more familiarity with the plays though. I thought the Vikings with two backs and a faster QB might be the perfect place to try it. Try getting nowhere in the first preseason game.

From reading the various developer chats, it is apparent to me that familiarity is critical to a successful offense. From what I've read, it seems like an entirely new offense will take at least a full season to start clicking.

Edit to add: If this implemented how well it sounds in the chats, I think they nailed this better than football text sims do.

I ended up getting tired and quitting the game yesterday, but it seems that a good strategy might be to work on a handful of plays to get experience up each game, especially in the preseason.

Has anyone had any success with screen passes? I'm thinking it's related to my QB's awareness and the play knowledge but my QB will basically just hold onto the ball until he's sacked, or on the few times he does get it out of his hands, he's waited so long that there is a LB waiting to get hit the RB.

I've had some success.. especially when Jackson gets some running room.

In earlier Madden / NCAA games (08 for me), a screen pass is a recipe for a sack if the AI is QBing. He just holds the ball way too long.

I haven't play HC, but I can't think of a single version of Madden or NCAA where the AI knew how to execute a screen pass. They would always try and throw it downfield. I wonder if the Head Coach developers caught this and fixed it.

A developer has posted one of several shorts "feature breakdowns" to come explaining different HC gameplay aspects. This one is about the various emotional responses to different events in the game and is a good read. The more I read about the game, the more I anticipate buying the stand alone game:

Feature Breakdown: Emotional Reaction (includes some clarity on emotional/calm issue) - Operation Sports Forums

Grrr....I think I'm going to cave and pick up the C.E.

To anyone who has the game right now: is this a game that is conducive to writing a dynasty in the forums here or is the game too fast-paced due to the real-time nature of the gameplay?

I think it screams a dynasty writeup, I just don't have the time right now.

I agree with this... While doing a dynasty would slow you down alot and this game already moves pretty slow time wise (the game does not drag at all it just take alot of time to get through all the tasks...) I would love to see what someone could do with a dynasty thread and this game!

I'll likely end up doing an Eagles' dynasty when I get it, but it'll probably be my usual low frills style of writing. Does the game allow for uploading of video?

Man, I thought the Dolphins were bad before the roster update, they are twice as bad now. Maybe I'll start a career with a loaded team just to get the hang of the game since with the Dolphins lineup I'll probably get fired season one.

Since I don't anticipate doing one for NCAA I might do a Head Coach dynasty for the Falcons. Probably depends on whether I pick up an el cheapo laptop or not.