I can honestly say that I have never played a more unique and nuanced football experience than that of NFL Head Coach 09.  In-fact, its extremely tough to write about because there’s simply so much to the game, and I know those of us at the EA event hardly scratched the surface of what all it offers.

We were given a brief walk-through of the game by lead designer Josh Looman, who –more than any other EA football designer I have met- seems like “one of us guys from the forums.”  Josh is all about the details, the strategy, the “mental-stuff”, and the big decisions that go into NFL football.  He’s as “hardcore” as it gets.  After about 15 minutes of listening to him, I think everyone in the room realized that EA had the perfect man for the job of crafting this very unique experience.

Josh Looman started off the discussions by asking us how many of us played the first “Head Coach” on current gen.  About 25% of us there had.  He then asked us how many of us liked it, and every hand went down, including his own.  Josh then went into a laundry list of things that were done poorly in NFL Head Coach, and just how cumbersome and “not-fun” it was.  He hit on all of my gripes about the old game too.


NFL Head Coach (2006) issues.

***It was never really clear what you were to do next on your coaches schedule.

***The game made you  talk to everyone on your staff just in case they had something to add or to tell you to do, often making you cycle through people who had nothing to say to you.

***The AI was terrible, particularly when you often called a passing play and your QB would pull the ball down without even trying to make reads- and try to run.

***The original Head Coach game simulated boring stuff that didn’t even need to be simulated.

***The menu system on the original game stunk, often giving you no clue about what you were to do next on your schedule.

***It took too many button presses and too much time simply to get to game day.

***The game was simply tedious.

The great thing is that Josh agreed with every single part of that, and added many more instances of problems with the last game.  The new NFL Head Coach 09 team wanted to make a totally new experience where the game was intuitive, easily navigated, strategic, filled with NFL authenticity- and most importantly…fun. 

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The first thing you will notice upon playing NCA09 is that it moves much smoother than last year. Considering how last year's game moved at 60fps (for XBOX 360), that's quite a statement. That's not to say that the frames per second has increased, but rather the fluidity of the game seems to have increased. The multitude of new animations have smooth, practically seamless transitions. NCAA 09 looks damn good, and from visuals alone, its clearly the best looking football game I've ever seen. The improved player models are fantastic. EA has come a long way over the past two years in depicting college athletes in their game.

One point I'd also like to make is that the stadium visuals are photo-realistic. The “weather shading” is fantastic. For instance, if its late afternoon game and the sun is setting, the red sky casts the appropriate hue of color on all objects in the game, and that includes the players and their uniforms. Likewise, a mid-day game at Sun Devil Stadium will brighten everything in the stadium and make the colors of all uniforms, stands, cheerleaders and the field even more brilliant. I'll go so far as to say we've seen nothing this close to photo-realism from football graphics. What's even more impressive is that despite all the graphic enhancements, the game seems to run even faster than last year's game.

Now, lets talk about grass...

Next-gen football has been struggling with its visual interpretation of grass vs. turf visuals for years now. All previous versions of NCAA and Madden did a poor job of giving us realistic looking grass, and the same can be said for All Pro Football 2K8. Well, those days are over. EA's grass and turf depictions in NCAA 09 are second to none. The grass fields look photo-realistic down to the individual blades of grass. Turf also differentiates itself with expert subtlety and texture. It seems like a little thing, but it will be one of the first things you notice at kick-off.

As far as presentation goes, its very similar to last year in terms of audio with the Corso, Nessler, and Herbstreit. I didn't notice much in the way of new audio from those guys, but that might not be fair, because it was hard to hear “my” game being played since we were all playing on stations that were next to each other on tables. So sound was a mixed up affair due to my proximity to other players and their respective speakers. (Next time I'll remember to bring headsets.)

That's not to say NCAA 09 doesn't sound good, I could hear the commentary, and it was timely and the usual good quality that the NCAA series is known for. I'm just saying that I couldn't concentrate too well on my own audio to really give it a fair assessment and notice any differences from last year

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