Crosseyed Bunny

Madden has improved upon a successful series every year, to the point where it had become complicated to new gamers.
This years video opens with the words Simpler. Quicker. Deeper. Oh it's a mans game for sure.



The biggest question every year is whether can get the real world feel of the NFL, this year they've come about as close as you can get.



Madden 11 gives you every spin move and sternum-rupturing tackle that you see on Sundays. Little touches like deemphasizing the suction of the hit stick so that landing big hits actually feels special are great. As is the dual analog stick control scheme which allows you to perform all the jukes, spin moves and stutter steps you could ask for. It also gives players the ability to pivot their upper-body to guard the ball from incoming tacklers. It all looks cool and works well on the field.
While using the right analog stick for more than simple juking is great, the biggest departure for this year's Madden in terms of control is the elimination of turbo (on default settings). At first, it's weird, yes. But before long you'll forget what using a turbo button felt like. Now your player just adjusts his speed accordingly. Rarely did I find myself outrunning my blockers as the AI was usually sharp enough to make its own changes in speed.

Another great addition in this year's gameplay is the ability for your AI teammates to actually land successful blocks and hold them long enough for you to utilize them if you can read the defense correctly. You might notice this working almost too well in conjunction with the new right analog control scheme. I had no problems breaking off multiple 300+ yard games on the ground in route to a 15-1 season on the All-Pro difficulty that used to give me trouble in past Madden games.

On the defensive side of the ball, EA Sports tried to turn all of the hot routing and assignment changing functionality you're used to into something called the Strategy Pad, but the results are a bit frustrating. You navigate through options with the D-Pad, adding one extra button press to access the aforementioned functions. Anyone playing against a fast-paced offense is going to be a bit handcuffed to make their adjustments in time before the snap.

For all of the cool gameplay features that have been developed for this year's game, the most debated will likely be a huge departure for the series called GameFlow. It's an automated play calling feature that shortens a typical gameplay experience to about 30 minutes (where it used be closer to an hour) by theoretically cutting the amount plays from more than 300 to one. I think if you're someone who's new to Madden or if the complexities of figuring out formation types was too much for you in the past, you're going to enjoy the bulk of what GameFlow does for you.

Madden comes out tomorrow, 8/10/10. Watch the video and join the NFL.




Thanks to Nate Ahearn with IGN.com