Madden NFL 11

Most people complain that every new edition of Madden is just a roster update. But really, how much does the game of football change from season to season? (Well, apparently if you’re Peyton Manning and the Colts, things can change a lot...) If anything, professional football games go through incremental changes from season to season and fittingly, so does the Madden franchise. But some of those small changes lead to playing the game in a different way. (Again, like Peyton Manning and the Colts...)

The biggest change in Madden NFL 11 is the addition of the Gameflow playcalling system. At first glance, it could be mistaken for a dumbed down version of “Ask Madden� (as if “Ask Madden� itself wasn’t a dumbed down version of playcalling to begin with). But it probably brings the game of Madden football closer to how actual football is played.

If you want, you can just go with the default playbook and have your offensive and defensive coordinators call in the plays and your job is to execute them. But for the more football savvy of you out there, you can actually build a playbook based on certain situations you’ll encounter in the game, i.e. first and 10, first and long, third and short etc. You give each play a weight in those situations and the more weight the play has the more often the play will be called.

During an actual matchup, it does make the game flow better (hey! that's the name of the system!). All the time you would have spent picking a play is instead used to execute that play. But for those of you out there who are classic Madden players, you can revert to the classic playcalling style and scroll through pages and pages of plays until you find exactly what you want to do.

The Gameflow system isn’t perfect, however. There were a few times when a certain play was called, I was sacked for a loss and the same exact play was called on the next down. Uh, if the play didn’t work the first time, why am I trying it a second time? I would have also liked to see a little more depth in the Gameflow planning. I would have liked to been able to scout my upcoming opponent and adjust my playbook accordingly. Or even be able to script the first 15 plays. But maybe that’ll be in Madden NFL 12...

One of the other additions I really enjoyed were the comments from the offensive and defensive coordinators before each play. The feature is probably more useful for people who are new to Madden, as they will (most of the time) give you tips on how to successfully execute the play. Don’t know how to execute a screen pass? They’ll tell you. Why are you blitzing? They’ll tell you. It levels the playing field a little between Madden veterans and Madden rookies.

Locomotion is the other big change in Madden NFL 11, where players will now physically move more realistically based on their attributes. The change itself is very nuanced, but leads to a more natural feeling game. The sprint button has been removed (it can be enabled for players who miss the extra control) but now your players will accelerate more naturally based on whether or not they’re streaking down the sideline, making a cut, etc.

The Madden franchise is the epitome of “evolution not revolution� in videogames. There aren’t a whole lot of franchises out there that have been around for as long as Madden has, let alone being based on a real sport that evolves as well. But while the evolution in Madden NFL 11 may irk some players who have grown comfortable with the games of the past, the subtle changes and nuances in this year’s edition make it a more natural feeling game.

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