Ares wrote:
Haven't played any of its latest iterations, but in my experience the franchise mode was always very underwhelming. It's supposedly better with 17, but since EA refuses to make its products for the PC I won't ever even get a chance to find out.
I can't even begin to tell you just how much I hate that EA has a monopoly on the NFL license, because they've done nothing with it but produce just this one game with updated rosters every season. They made a brief foray into the management side of the sport with Head Coach, but that was a heap of rubbish. They never followed up because it didn't sell well, but it didn't sell well because the game was total garbage. With the Football Management series being so popular there has to be a market for an NFL equivalent, but that won't happen until the NFL finally lets other game companies start licensing its product. But considering EA pays something like $50M+/year for its exclusivity, that won't likely ever happen.
Yeah EA is the worst. That exclusive deal they have with the NFL has set back "football games" a decade at least. If there was real competition, I have to imagine there would be MUCH better football games out there.
I agree with everything you have to say except, I would add that "NFL Head Coach 09" is one of my favorite football games of all time. It has it's issues, but as far as NFL sims go, I haven't found much better(Except maybe MFN). The roster management has a ton of depth and you can really build successful teams with completely different schemes. It's fun to experiment with different game-plans and whatnot. Also the draft is alot of fun if you're a football nerd like me. Now don't get me wrong, it's not some perfect game, but a quality NFL sim seems like it's nearly impossible to find. Every year Madden's franchise mode is an epic disappointment(not that I buy it every year, I only buy Madden every 5 years or so, and it's still the same game lol). If they made an updated "Head Coach" I would buy it in an instant. I don't even need fancy graphics and all that, I just want a deep intelligent sim... is that so hard to ask.
I'm thankful I found MFN, because this is the most challenging football sim I've ever played. With the opponents being ran by actual people the trades, free agency, and draft are all more fun. I just wish this game had a little more depth/strategy to the "X's and O's".