Here's the deal. This isn't a new game. It's the 8th iteration, modification, and improvement of the best American Football Franchise simulator around. A true indy, one man written and developed, you won't find fancy graphics or big budget presentation, but you will find statisical accuracy, the challenge of the draft, who to resign when your team runs up to the cap and all the frustration of running the Cleveland Browns franchise into the ground, year after year.

New and rewritten for FOF 8 are playbooks for teams, along with thousands of playcalling combinations, personnel packages. You'll be able to import entire playbooks for your team, design your own plays, or let the AI handle all of that for you. You'll have to deal with contracts, inactive players, injuries, pissed off rookies who think they are really something special. You'll have to deal with career ending injuries, cap management, the challenge of trading players, draft picks, or all of the above for that shot at Ricky Williams (GO YOU!!!!)

Players will boom and bust like in real life. You'll get to track their progress through training camps, and they'll need playing time if you want to get the develop quickly. The draft can be where you decide on who to fill out your roster with. There'll be players with skill but terrible combines, players with terrible skills who are amazing atheletes, and you'll eventually get a shot at players with the total package. How you manage all of that, who you draft, sign, trade will be totally up to you.

The game will track the stats for all players, all teams, for the life of the game. You'll create a world all your own. The game is very deep. There isn't a pro football franchise simlulator with the kind of under the hood mechanincs that this one has. There are numerous ways to personalize the game through settings, like alternate player files, importing custom graphics, fog of war settings, and getting fired for sucking ass. Start the game with stock teams, a full draft, or a preference draft where you put emphasis on player groups and the scout does the drafting for you.

If you didn't think that this was overwhelming enough, all this can be played against human managers in the many multiplayer leagues, some that have been going on for years and years, or new ones that are bound to start. There's no challenge like matching wits with human GM's in FOF. You're guaranteed to be humbled.

Even though the help file and manual is robust, you can find answers to questions on the game, strategy, modifications and find a multi player league to join at Front Office Football Central, the unofficial home for all things FOF.

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/index.php