My favorite feature new to this years installment of EA’s Madden football is undoubtedly the Online Franchise mode. The ability to bring not only my stick and play calling skills but also my managerial skills online really gets me going.

One of the nice things you get to do is make video mashups of your online games. It’s pretty easy to do, the first thing you need to do is save highlights from your game. This must be done BEFORE you exit the contest. Under the game recap menu just select the highlights mode, go in and pick any notable plays from that game and save them to your hard drive.

At that point you need to go into the Madden menu and upload the highlights to the EA servers. From there you must go online to www.easportsworld.com and login using your ea account information. The front page there should have a link to video highlight reels, click to follow the link and you’re all set.

You can drag and drop different sound files they’ve got, things like ambient crowd noise and cracking football helmets and pads. Mix and match your highlights and sync up the sounds and youre good to go.

Below I’ve posted my highlight reel from my first player versus player matchup. My Bills jumped out to an early lead on a couple of Maurice Jones-Drew touchdowns and shut down Brandon Jacobs and the Buccaneers pass game. Forced to take to the skies in the second half to get back into the game, the Bucs sails were slashed by a couple late picks by Louis Delmas. Final Score was Bills 31 bucs 24. Feast baby…

As I said in my post earlier this week, online franchise is finally here….and it’s now official. Today at E3 Electronic Arts announced the mode with a trailer that made me want to skip my life until the moment that game is in my hands as fast as Adam Sandler skipped through his entire life in Click. Apparently I don’t learn from the morals in movies. Whatever, I don’t care, this game mode looks awesome.

I am assuming the lag will be minimal and everything will run as smoothly as the video seems to imply it will. If it does you will not see much of me. Madden players will be on the web setting their depth charts more often than my little sister checks her Facebook. Seriously, just watch the video (trailer is about a minute in).

IGN.com designer series video showcases online co-op for the first time in the Madden series. A great addition in my opinion, I’ve always been a co-op gamer at heart despite my competitive side. Another note: after a second watching of this video I noticed Ian Cummings mention “Online franchise” mode. I haven’t seen any specifics on this game mode yet but I would absolutely LOVE to see it. The idea of a multiplayer franchise mode has always thrilled me.

ESPN.com recently posted the Madden 10 top player ratings. It hurts me to see Tony Romo ranked higher than my beloved Matt Hasselbeck. But I suppose I can find comfort in John Carlson’s top ten ranking among TE’s.

I also ran across the Madden 10 rookie player ratings. Some nerd took the time to put them all into a searchable database, which is pretty cool really. You can just look at your teams choices or all picks from a specific school. I did notice however that the last couple rounds of the draft have been left out. Not sure why or if I’m just having problems with the site.

One last item worth noting is the video from EA producer Iam Cummings explaining the new Pro-Tak system. They’re using it for both passing pocket creation and tackling animations/physics. Using only the video as evidence I’d say it should work in an amazing fashion. However, the Madden series has always seemed to find ways let me down when I’m at my most excited state.