I spent the better part of 6 hours today and about 10 hours within the week playing this game, doing everything there is to do in the game and I have to say I am very impressed. I play a lot of Wolverine Studios games but that's usually in the college and pro basketball games. This edition of the game was by far the best pro football game wolverine has had since the games were called "Pro Football Simulator".

So here's my analysis.


UI - Amazing and much improved

It's a lot easier to find things in this game and its a lot easier to navigate places. I like adding the hover icon to players so I could see some quick stats. Helped me when seeing injuries in game. This part of the game was probably the biggest improvement. It looks pretty, everything I wanted to find it didn't take me long to find at all. All around a great beast.


Game play and Immersion - Great game play but still lacks coaching immersion

Playing the game was fun, playing with my favorite team was fun and creating some studs and seeing how they'd play was nice. Seeing players go under investigation and suspension was very funny. The players are fully immersed. But as a football sim guy they lack in the biggest area that matters to me that EA ignores from people from year to year, and that's coaching immersion. They added coaches and coaching stats/traits a few years back and it's great, but it's mostly untouched since then. In the college basketball and pro basketball game, they allow you to create a coach and run up the ranks if you so choose to do and in the college football game you were even able to be a 2nd assistant. Being able to create a coach and have a fun coaching carousel in the college and pro football games are usually what drive the bargain for me. If these games had it I probably would give it a 10/10 no questions asked. They did, however allow you to create your own plays (and this was amazing). Great game, good player immersion, zero user immersion with regards to coaching.



The Live Play Calling is brilliant but still needs work

Calling plays when I made them is amazing, and the game is great but it seems a little too random when I watch a game. Way too many wide open players dropping easy passes and way too many quadruple covered players making the catch. I am a programmer myself and I know how hard it is to code in physics especially if they're doing this on a poor game engine or their own game engine so I completely understand how they'd have to make some aspects random or teams would be dropping 70 every game, however seeing my defense blow terrible coverage and have a player go wide open or the wide open dropped passes do get a little heated when I am in a situation where I am in a close game. I love calling plays live and hopefully one day wolverine could make it so we can do it in multiplayer leagues, but baby steps.



Presentation is the best I have seen in a wolverine studios game

Looking at the game of the week predictions and the mock drafts as well as the power rankings is great. The presentation is great and the colors are crisp and amazing. I'm a guy who enjoys all the little details and those are pretty awesome. The player cards are pretty and organized and I like it all overall, very beautiful game!




The verdict


I have played Deeproute, Pigskin Empire, Goalline Blitz, Myfootball now, Bowl Bound CFB, Pro Football Simulator, and this game takes the cake over all of those sim games. The game runs smooth, doesn't take long to navigate anywhere and you can pick up the game in a short amount of time. The game is pretty and the game play is a little dicey but still very good for an Indie game. The lack of immersion as far as a lack of a coaching carousel and moving up a coaching latter hurts for me but not enough to give this game a low rating. Creating playbooks is super fun and maybe one day they can find a way to implement college options (I know how complicated that would be so I wouldn't expect it anytime soon you college kids).


My rating out of 100: 92/100 (Probably the best football sim that isn't EA you'll find on the web to date)




My wishlist/suggestions for future games:


1. Create a coach, coaching carousel, pretty much the college/pro basketball model.
2. CPU draft day trades, in 4 seasons I have never seen a draft day trade between CPU teams.
3. A better rating scale/model. I know you allow players to create their own but maybe adding more ratings, and changing the matrix so there aren't 65 QB's in a league over 80 OVR. Adding ratings like pocket awareness, pass rush ability, man and zone coverage, etc.
4. Updated game engine - so the gameplay is a little more realistic like the wide open drops, kickoffs not showing etc.
5. Updated contract system - guaranteed contracts, allowing the salary cap and max salaries to be raised without the users doing it themselves.
6. Ability to coach individual players in game, like telling a QB to stop holding the ball so long.



What do you guys think of the game? Or what do you think can be added? Let me know down below



vvvv

People don’t care about those other simulations. The only thing people want to know is how this compares with Front Office Football.

Well I have FOF8 and Front Office football's UI is absolute garbage and there's no 2D simulation and advanced setting options like GreyDog or Wolverine has so I'd easily put DDS:PF2020 ahead of FOF8

I would agree (and I think most do) FOFs interface is terrible. How do they compare in terms of depth, AI and so forth?

Depth is okay, contracts are a little weird you kind of have to set your own system, there's no such thing as "market value" a top RB will ask for the same money as a top QB which is fine and dandy until your elite OL asks for the same as your QB and the same goes for all positions, AI is good in game and it has good trade logic but I have never seen a draft day trade between two CPU teams which is what I'd like to see. It has many good things about it, and I have seen the other games they have and I know they're doing well.

Another thing I'd like to see is in the player view > records > awards tab, instead of listing MVP X 2 or Pro Bowler x2 , it lists them individually, so it takes up alot of room when it could easily be clearer to see if it was 3x Offensive Player of the Year (2021,2022,2023) instead of 2021 Offensive Player of the Year, 2022 Offensive Player of the Year, 2023 Offensive Player of the Year taking up 3 lines.

I'd also love to see something added that shows all head coach/OC/DC records like on an alltime list. Currently you can see it through their profile if you click it, but you can't see if they were an OC , a DC or a HC during that stint? I also don't know if coaches just dissappear from the game entirely when they retire and their records/stats are lost to time.

Additionally, are dual qb threats/rushing qb's fixed this year? I remembered there were no designed qb runs that worked in DDSPF 16 untill you edit the XML to do so.

Gabe778 wrote:
UI - Amazing and much improved

It's a lot easier to find things in this game and its a lot easier to navigate places. I like adding the hover icon to players so I could see some quick stats. Helped me when seeing injuries in game. This part of the game was probably the biggest improvement. It looks pretty, everything I wanted to find it didn't take me long to find at all. All around a great beast.

vvvv

You're of course entitled to your opinion however i strongly disagree about UI being amazing - quite the opposite i would say actually. Just cause it may be better then some of the games you mentioned that are not that good to begin with does not make it good. I think its really clunky and not very user friendly and its really begining to show its age. I'm glad they're working on a new UI judging from the pro basketball promo's and hopefully they will apply it in all their games.
When you really compare it to some of the best games in the same genre (Football Manager, FHM, OOTP) it's quite the opposite of amazing.
Agree on your points about lacking immersion, i tried the demo and i just can't get into it as much as i'd like to. In fact College Basketball version is the only one i really like just for the facts its the most immersive of the bunch though it to could use an UI upgrade sooner rather then later.