Madden NFL 11 Makes Co-Op Online Football Fun

source: www.ign.com

Last year's co-op mode in Madden sucked. EA Sports knows it. I know it. You probably know it. Thankfully the developers down at Tiburon in Orlando, Florida took a step back and readdressed the methodology the company brings to cooperative football. I recently got my hands on an early version of Madden NFL 11's Online Team Play and will say that it's already looking like a massive step forward for co-op pigskin.

Gone are the days of only being able to play with one friend against the CPU. Now you'll be able to play with up to six players total with a maximum of three on either side. Yes, you can also play 2 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2, 3 vs. 2 and any other permutation you can think of. While that's wonderful, it wouldn't amount to much if the overall experience remained as broken as we all remember it. Thankfully just about every complaint I had with last year's gameplay system has been heard.

EA Sports wisely revamped the way you control the players on the field. Instead of switching to any player on the field at the risk of becoming seriously disoriented (something that crippled last year's experience), you'll now select subsets of players to inhabit. You'll need to assign one player on each squad to be the captain. They'll be responsible for managing the depth chart, calling timeouts and other administrative duties.


When on defense you'll pick either the linebackers, defensive line, defensive backs or something called "any." Obviously when you pick one set of players, you're confined to those positions. If I pick the linebackers, then I can be the middle or outside linebackers, that's it. If you pick "any" then you can move to any currently uncontrolled player. This creates a wonderful issue of strategy as having two human-controlled linebackers is obviously better than having only one (if you're any good).

Thankfully, even when playing as "any," the camera is kept at the same detached position that you're used to from Madden gameplay, but from the flipped perspective of being on defense (so the offense is coming at you). That means that if you're playing as a DB and switch to an unoccupied defensive end, you won't want to vomit on your couch because of the panning camera.

On offense, you play as either the quarterback, one of the running backs (or fullback) or a receiver. The quarterback picks the plays (much like the linebacker on defense) and it's up to the wide receiver and running back to carry them out effectively. Any player (on offense or defense) can switch up their assignment if needed with the d-pad which has been renamed the strategy pad for Madden NFL 11. For receivers that means altering their route by either free running or selecting a hot route and for running backs, that means switching the direction of the play pre-snap. Receivers will also need to worry about catching the ball as the animation doesn't automatically play out at the proper time. Instead players are going to need hit the Y (triangle on PS3) button at exactly the right moment.

As if being confined to a small subset of players wasn't a big enough deviation from standard Madden gameplay, here's another: players who select a position other than "any" are incentivized to perform well by in-game accomplishments (read: attribute boosts). For instance, when playing as the QB, throwing two touchdowns and passing for more than 300 yards in a game will net you the "Air Show" accomplishment, thus boosting your awareness, medium passing accuracy and short passing accuracy by 2%. There are four different boosts per position and they increase in difficulty and in their affect. They're also additive, so if you get Air Show and The Dutchmen as quarterback, the next game you're going to be loaded up with attribute boosts (since boosts aren't activated as soon as you earn them).

I spent a good bit of time with Online Team Play in Madden NFL 11, and while I didn't earn any of the boosts in my single game (I blame my co-op partner), I still had a blast playing the redesigned mode. It's miles better than last year's effort, and it finally seems like EA Sports has given players a reason to play together online as opposed to against one another. I will admit that playing as the quarterback is still the most fun of the offensives positions, but they've done a decent job of giving other players things to do (outside of playcalling, which will still be a little boring for those not playing as QB).

Finally, a defensive camera angle that works.
I'm also just a little worried about connection issues. EA Sports managed to connect my teammate and I to three developers in Orland, Florida (that's across the country from LA for those keeping track) and provided a good experience throughout with no signs of lag. Still, I can't help but worry about how it will perform once it hits the perils of Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. Being that Madden's online infrastructure has never had to handle six connections at once, here's hoping that EA Sports is putting in extra time to ensure relatively lag-free gameplay.

Madden NFL 11's Online Team Play has me more excited than ever to hop on Xbox Live or PlayStation Network with friends from across the country and compete on the gridiron. They've fixed all of the nagging issues that I had with last year's co-op play and they've expanded on the overall design, making it more exciting and more of a draw for football fans. Should the Madden community can take the time to explore all that Online Team Play has to offer, I think they'll be pleasantly surprised.

Madden NFL 11 is scheduled to launch on August 10 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, Wii, PlayStation Portable and iPhone.

Sports games use to be fun, but they aren't anymore.

Madden might actually be good this year

Maybe, Tiger Woods is a good game.

ill post a story about it

Go ahead.

im going to post it in a few