Madden '09-a look ahead

• Two of the most talked about are the end zone celebrations, like LJ's tribute to Jay-Z and the ability to return missed field goals(how many times are you really going to use that).

• There's a "backtrack" feature, where you can go back and re-play a play that you just botched. If you failed to pick up a safety in coverage, you can go back and see what you should have seen to begin with. And if you're playing with the Bears as Rex Grossman, you can go back and throw that same interception 19 times in a row. If you want, you can even go back in history and do the play over for real. So, when you take that cheap shot on Russel and get a roughing the passer on 4th and 20 with 1:02 left in the AFC championship game at Arrowhead against the Raiders, you can just go back and lay off. You get "do-over’s". Before the game, you can assign a certain amount of "do-over’s" to each player. Like mulligan’s. I'll assign Zero, well maybe one incase the above happens.

• Tom Hammond and Cris Collinsworth will be your commentators. This will be an improvement over the public speaker guy. And a huge improvement over Madden himself.

• The concept of Madden IQ: When you first turn on the game, you'll run through a series of drills. This series of three minigames covers four categories: running, passing, rush defense, and pass defense. You'll be graded on how well you do, and that score will be your Madden IQ. If you suck at running the ball, the game will ease up on run defense for ya pansy. If you throw more picks than strikes, the pass defense won't snag all your balls in return busting them. They are trying to phase out the Rookie, Pro, All-Pro, and Madden difficulty settings and let the game's difficulty intelligently adjust to your skill level. If you play, you know All-Pro is just too easy and Madden is unrealistic.

• You no longer have to go into the pause menu to make substitutions. All that will be available right on the play calling screen. This matter depending on your "dedication" to Madden.

• On-line leagues are improved so that you can have up to 32 teams in a league, play games in any order, trade players, and conduct a fantasy draft with every user. You also won't have to stick it to anyone by making them play with the Raiders. If multiple people want to be the same team, they can. However there are no divisions, it's every man for himself. I encourage making a league of 32 Kansas City Chiefs and see which moves pay off for us in the future, because you know Madden knows.

• The sidelines are said to look as sharp and busy as NFL sidelines, which has always been a weak point of football games. It's not a big deal; really, it's just odd that no game has ever come close to replicating what an actual NFL sideline looks like. I hear they will even have an option of putting in a code that will unlock a feature of security at Arrowhead escorting out a 15-70 year old sports writer "fan", the whole crowd cheers and throws hot dogs and what not at the loser, it'll be cool I'm sure. If Gunter still stands on the side lines I'd love to see him in his yellow glasses, that'd be attention to detail.

same as you Arrowhead816 play madden alot on my ps3 but now am also on GTA4, i've played madden for years but can't help thinking that madden 07 on the ps2 was better than 08 the gameplay was better and the interface was way better all 08 had was better graphics

whta does everyone think????

kcchief1981 do you play online?? I use to have madden 07 on ps2 but the madden 07 on ps3 was trash, Madden 08 was a complete 360 from madden 07. I had a ps3 since day 1 of launch day, so i was pretty upset about the graphics and gameplay. The thing I like about Madden 09 is the ability to catch a missed field goal. It's a more complexed thinking if you wanna go for a 50+ kick.

Oh yeah how far have you gotten on GTA4? Did you kill Playboy or his buddy??

i'm not on line at the minute but will be in a couple of weeks so i'll holla at you then,

and i killed his buddy dwayne i think it was but was a pretty crappy choice, my mate killed playboy and got his penthouse suite and all dwaynes buddies as hired goons to help him on missions. How you getting on,who did you kill???