Madden 09

I have to say it appears as though EA is finally listening to the gamers and making improvements in key areas of the Madden franchise that are well overdue.... Below is from the EA animation person working on Madden. Sounds encouraging.

While I don't want to (and EA definitely doesn't want me to) give away the "how" we do it, I find it hard to imagine you won't both see and feel the dramatic improvements this new system has made to multi-character interaction. The basics of the system allows the characters to be aware of each other on the field in a way they never could before, and we can then manipulate the animation with the physics engine to allow the hits to match the physics scenario (rather than finding a tackle that sort of matches it like the old days). We can also prevent the loss of momentum of the victim character that causes that "suction" feeling. You will see more variety because we no longer have tackles that play more often because certain scenarios occur more frequently. We have also eliminated the "explosion" phenomenon when the game couldn't find a tackle animation in time and characters bang off each other and both fall down.

In Madden NFL 09 this also means you can truly break tackles now, you can spin, truck, juke and stiff arm your way out of tackles AFTER impact has already happened. But be careful, defenders can now strip the ball from you after impact as well, and Hit-sticks are nothing short of brutal.