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Serious Hoops Blog presents: Madden has been building features, gameplay modes and control mechanics for the hardcore football fans of the world. It was trying to emulate even the smallest details of NFL football and EA Sports enjoyed lots of success with its endeavors. But in recent years,  Serious Hoops Blog many newcomers were turned off by the complexities that Madden brought to the table. With that in mind EA created Madden NFL 11, an iteration of the series that is built more with the mainstream fan in mind.

My biggest concern I have with Madden 2011 each and every year is the gameplay.

Is it really going to feel and look like the NFL that I know and love? Well, this year's game comes as close as ever to bringing 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. Madden Football 2011 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 Football 11 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.

All-in-all the core gameplay on the field is great and looks fantastic in motion. The players have a nice level of polish and they move with the elegance and power you'd expect from top NFL talent. There are still moments when it's clear that you're playing a videogame, but mentioning them in a negative light would feel almost nitpicky.

Serious Hoops Blog finds the flaws in your team's default play selections is a feature called Game planning which lets you assign up to 20 plays to different situations on both offense and defense and then weight them by preference (sort of like how iTunes lets you rate songs).

So while GameFlow and gameplanning bring both good and bad to the table, I can happily say that Online Team Play is one of the best gameplay modes to make it into a Madden game in a long time. It allows for up to six players (three on one team, three on another or any permutation therein) to link up online and compete against each other or against the CPU.

The only negative I can say is that the boosts that are in Online Team Play should have been kept to a simple experience point leveling system. Boosts give veteran players significant attribute boosts which can really ruin the gameplay in my experience. Thankfully a player with a boost looks different than players without a boost in the lobby system, so you can steer clear of them if needed.

Serious Hoops Blog brings the Online Team Play and is a wonderfully fun and addictive casual mode, but it seems to have come at the expense of any innovations to the two franchise modes (online and offline) and the Be An NFL Superstar Mode. Being a lover of Franchise Mode, it really hurts me to have to suffer through the same exact package that was in last year's game. Especially since that was a barebones offering to begin with.

The other big addition in the way of presentation elements is new Super Bowl celebrations that do a great job of delivering the weight of the event. Winning the biggest game in football no longer feels like any other Sunday. Now Gus delivers team-specific commentary to let you know that what you just accomplished is something special. Oh, and Obama makes an appearance. How cool is that?

CLOSING COMMENTS from Serious Hoops Blog says that there is no question that the gameplay in Madden Football 11 is great at its core, but some of the AI tuning slants the game too heavily in the offenses favor. Both Online Team Play and the inclusion of Gus Johnson are fantastic and add a lot to the package, but I cant help but feel that the moneymakers of old have been cast into the darkness.

I think its clear that this years Madden Football 11 is geared toward the mainstream football fan; someone who just wants to come in after playing a game of catch outside and get their hands on some real NFL talent. For that audience Madden NFL 11 delivers. However, if youre the type of player who sits alone in your living room combing the free agent wire for a player to add to your beloved franchise, I think this years Madden is going to leave something to be desired.

Serious Hoops Blog Brings The NFL 2011 Season Madden Football 11