Franchise and Dynasty modes are nothing new. Since the PSOne, nearly every sports game has included a mode that lets you take the role of a higher-up in the organization and make decisions that will help improve your team’s chances of that sport’s respective championship. Of course, these modes were secondary to the main game. NFL Head Coach is a completely different approach to sports games, making front office and coaching decisions the main game while actual game situations are secondary. Unfortunately, the end result is more possibilities than product.

NFL Head Coach uses the Madden engine, so you know it looks good – at least during in-game situations and during practice camps. These moments make up only a fraction of the actual game, leaving the rest to be filled by shots of the office, your command center during the draft and meeting rooms. Everything looks okay, but isn’t terribly exciting.

Music is okay, though there’s nothing here to get overly excited about. Music is made up mostly of the fanfares heard in those old NFL Film series that ESPN shows during the day when nothing else is going on. The voice acting is terrible.

NFL Head Coach starts with the creation of your coach. You begin by choosing from a basic selection of visual options, deciding on your coach’s race, age, weight… its generic, but this clearly isn’t the focus of the game. The real heart of the coach creation mode is deciding your gameplay philosophies. Are you offensive minded or defensive minded? What plays do you call in certain situations… all of these are questions you’ll have to ask as you apply for your first job. Your answers won’t determine if you get a job or not, but go into building your coach’s scheme and reputation.

Once you’ve made your coach and landed a job, it’s on to the main game, which is where everything begins to fall apart. NFL Head Coach is essentially a text-based adventure with long load times between each menu. A majority of your in-game time is spent digging through menus and hitting X, only to then sit through a load time that brings you to yet another menu. Your tenure with a team begins the day after the Super Bowl where you will then play through every day of the off season getting your team ready for next year. And really, these actions aren’t nearly as exciting as they sound – it feels like work.

While NFL Head Coach seems to get things right from a front office standpoint, there are still a few minor problems. Making trades is an awkward guessing game since there’s no way of telling if another team is interested in players you might be looking to dump off. Also, there’s no centralized scouting report (even from individual teams), so you’ll have to scout every player of every team while looking for new guys.

Trades are tricky as well. In the past, Madden has been criticized for having a trade system that let you stack your team with great players for next to nothing. The exact opposite is true for NFL Head Coach. Teams will refuse what look like great deals, especially if the deal would help you out. It is next to impossible to get big name players since teams will either want too much for them or will retain them when they become free agents.

I do have to give the developers props for the NFL Draft though, since it is actually kind of fun, especially when you have a digital Mel Kiper Jr. (and his digital hair) breaking down the picks and draft board.

Eventually all this fiddling leads to actual game days, which are about as exciting as everything that comes before it. Although the game uses the Madden engine, you don’t actually play Madden (so if you’re looking for something to hold you over, this isn’t it). Rather, you spend your time on the sidelines calling plays. As with the rest of the game, all game time decisions involve excessive navigation of menus. This wouldn’t be so bad if the game didn’t continue while you made decisions.

Coaching decisions can also become mini-episodes of Dr. Phil. You will have to motivate players, especially after a bad play or when the team is losing. Doing so is just as much a shot in the dark as making trades. There's no on-screen indicator to let you know where your player stands emotionally. I know there's an element of realism to this, but honestly I'd rather focus on coaching rather than making guesses about Drew Brees emotional well-being.

Online competitive menu navigation is also available.

The thing is, there’s actually an intriguing game buried somewhere in all this mess, it's just bogged down with all kinds of meaningless nuances that make the game harder than it needs to be. For whatever reason, the game goes out of its way to make sure you hit every roadblock on your path to turning your team around. Every move you make is blocked to the point that it feels like you’re being cheated. Why is it that every team can retain all of its top stars when doing so would easily put them over the cap? I am sure most owners and coaches would kill for the deals the players in NFL Head Coach must be cutting.

Again, NFL Head Coach has more in common with a text-based adventure game than Madden. As if this wasn’t bad enough, menus aren’t laid out all that well and can get confusing. As with most elements in the game, rather than going for a fun, streamlined experience there’s a lot of unneeded crud that you have to wade through. There’s a good, and dare I say fun, game buried somewhere in NFL Head Coach; the developers simply didn’t find it this time around.

There’s an audience for NFL Head Coach somewhere, I’m simply not among those ranks. In fact, most of the Madden-playing audience isn’t among those numbers either, which could lead to problems. Really, the game seems like it would be better suited for PC players than most console players. I suspect a lot of Madden players will likely pick up NFL Head Coach looking for something to hold them over until the next Madden hits. To this group my advice is to save your money or pick up NCAA Football.