Remember EA’s Madden 10 mantra “What You See on Sunday …”. Well one of the things I see every Sunday in a pro football game is hard hits and someone limping off the field injured. Injuries are a part of football and something that’s been in Madden since the day of the ambulance rolling on the field destroying everyone in it’s path. One of the newest aspects of Madden 10 that’s not getting a whole lot of love is the new and improved in-game injury system. The in-game injury system allows you keep an injured player on the bench or put him back in the game and risk further injury.

In years past when your starter got hurt, it would automatically take him out the game for however many quarters he was injured for. In more recent years you were allowed to sub some players back in the game even when they were hurt but his ratings would not be 100%. In Madden 10 there is an in-game screen that gives you the option to put a player back in the game after he is evaluated on the sidelines. With the ratings being so low for backups, it may make better sense to keep your starter in and risk the injury than to have the backup come in and play.

Let’s look at the following in-game injury decision screen shot:

Kapman appears to be ready to go back in the game and you have a choice, but he is still 60+ ovr better than his back up.  He says he had abdominal strain but I don’t think that even matters, he has a Medium re-injury risk.

Here is what GameStop’s Madden Monday Blog had to say:

Just like in a real game, you won’t know the status of an injury right away. When you see a player limping around or acting injured in other ways, you’ll have to call out the trainers, who will come out with all-new animations, to take a look at him. Coaches have always said that players can play hurt, but they can’t play injured. Once your player is examined, you’ll have to decide whether he can tough it out, or if he risks even greater injury.

If you decide to let him keep playing, his rating will be negatively affected, based on the severity of the injury. Plus, he’ll run the risk of making the injury worse. The system has been retooled to follow the logical consequences of players continuing with injuries.

For even more realism, injuries occur more often on special teams plays because everybody’s moving at top speed. An injury slider was also added so that you can tune the injury risk to your liking. And nearly every single injury type was recreated to replace unrealistic injuries like “bursitis,” “dehydration” and “Cat-Scratch Fever.” To top it off, the injury cart will roll out when your player needs a ride into the locker room!

So the decision is yours.   In playing the demo, I always subbed the starter back in and he never got re-injured and I never saw and injury risk higher than ‘MEDIUM’.  I think this might be something I look into further once I get my hands on the retail game but for now I don’t see this playing a big enough role as it should be.  I don’t think the injury system will make a big difference when you are playing online, but I can see this having an impact on Online and Offline Franchises.

What do you think EA can do to improve the injury system?

UPDATE:  Congrats to jonnyweb69 and HustlinOwl for winning the User Highlight Contest.

MyMaddenPad.com is fortunate to get our hands on some GameStop Madden 10 Demo Codes and we are giving them away.

Enter into our first User Highlight Contest by uploading your NCAA 10 User Highlight into either the PS3 or the 360 category and you may be picked to receive one of the FREE Madden 10 Demo Codes.

You can go here to upload your video:  http://www.mymaddenpad.com/video/

We will pick a random entry from each category and announce the winner on Thursday July 23, @ Noon.

GameStop is back with another entry into their Madden Monday blog where they cover Madden every Monday until the release on August 14th.

This week’s blog focuses on the details of Madden 10 and how much the Madden 10 has worked to give the madden gamer a taste of what they see on Sunday during a broadcast.  On Sunday when Peyton Manning throws an INT he goes to the phone on the sidelines and talks to the offensive coordinator upstairs.  When the Ravens are driving for a game winning FG attempt you see Matt Stover on the sidelines warming up.  Those are the type of things you can expect from the Madden presentation this year.

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PastaPadre details the release of the Madden NFL 10 Demo.

Yesterday Gamestop sent out an email detailing the plans for the Madden 10 demo. The exclusive five minute quarters demo featuring the Cardinals vs Steelers will be available to download using the code obtained from Gamestop on Thursday July 23rd. Those codes will apparently be available in the stores on July 15th. They will be in limited supply so it would be a good idea to call the stores on that day and head in to get it before they’re all gone.

Read the rest of the article here: Madden 10 Demos Dated

So the latest GameStop blog threw me for a loop because it didn’t cover anything new in Madden 10 but instead focused on a new program that EA will be creating … Madden NFL Hall of Fame Program. This is the first I’ve heard about this new program so I’m curious how this will turn out. It seems EA is engaging the fans by having them vote on what or who will be inducted into this Madden Hall of Fame.

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Madden Monday’s at GameStop continue with a column from guest writer and EA’s Lead Madden Developer, Ian Cummings.  Ian starts off like many of his writings this year, by discussing how the team wants to make this year’s version of Madden the most authentic game ever.  I feel like they have done that in regards to visuals and gameplay advancements.  In this article he talks at length how now a QB’s height and style of throw affect tip passes at the line of scrimmage.

Playing quarterback in Madden NFL 10 now has this whole new wrinkle of strategy that has never existed in franchise history — you actually have find open passing lanes. We added accurate QB throwing styles to this year’s game as well; so you have to be careful with the guys like Rivers and Romo that have a lower release as they can get their passes batted down more often. This addition also makes height relevant for the very first time — guys like Manning and Roethlisberger that tower in the pocket back there and have a high release have much less of a problem dealing with the linemen in front of them, where you have to do a lot more thinking with a guy like Garcia.

To view the whole blog article, click here.

Gamestop has started their annual Madden Mondays where they reveal some info about Madden 10. I’m especially interested in this years Gamestop Madden Monday because we have already heard a lot of information so far from the EA Inside Blog. Gues blog writer and EA Sports Director of Photography for Madden 10 drops by to share his thoughts on how this year’s Madden 10 is authentic and a Madden 10 Intro Video.

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Gamestop continues to give out exclusive content with Pre-Orders and now you can add Madden 10 to that list.  If you go and Pre-Order Madden 10 at your local GameStop you will be provided with an Extended Demo.

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