I downloaded FOF8 and have played it off an on the past few days.  It has some merits though I'd say it's overpriced at $30.  I'm assuming that has more to do with the fact that they have real NFL player names which means they probably had to pay the NFLPA an arm and leg.  The team names aren't the real NFL teams but you can quickly edit them to be.

 

I'm not 100% familiar with everything just yet, but I think this game really missed the mark on the scouting and drafting of players.  The scouting is done automatically.  By comparison, Head Coach '09 made you make decisions on who to focus on at the combine, what pro days you were going to attend and which specific players you would bring in for a private workout/visit and those decisions would help determine how accurate your big board would be on draft day in the areas that you focused on.  That part of the game was what hooked me on Head Coach '09 and I would never let the computer make picks for me in the draft or in UDFA.  In FOF8, I may make the first few picks for my team, but I quickly grow bored of the draft and let the computer finish up for me which is probably because the game doesn't have me put any work into the player ratings unless I'm missing something major. 

 

Despite Head Coach '09 at this point dealing with very old NFL rosters, it is a far superior game in my opinion.  It has its flaws, but the fun factor for me was much higher than what I'm getting out of FOF8.  It's too bad there wasn't enough interest in the game for EA Sports to pump out a new version every couple of years.

 

I have not yet played a multiplayer game of FOF8 and that part of the game is appealing to me as Head Coach '09 was a single player game only and the idea of a league populated by 32 human owners sounds intriguing.  

 

If you like the idea of running the front office of an NFL team and have never played Head Coach '09, I'd encourage any reading this to look into picking up a copy of it online some where.  It was only available on Xbox and Playstation and you can probably pick it up now for under $10.  I no longer own an Xbox and I'm not buying another one because I'm not a big console gamer.  If I could figure out how to run my computer to emulate an Xbox and play that game again, I probably would.

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