Here I am doing the last thing I'd ever expect on the Capcom blog: gushing over a EA Sports game.

I grew up on Madden, learned a bunch about football from Madden, even interned at EA and worked on Madden '95 Genesis / SNES.. But when the series went to 360 / PS3 and got the exclusive license it just lost something for me. This year, it got it back.

 With the addition of Online Leagues and really cool recordable plays (and improved gameplay), the franchise has taken on a whole new life for me. As a result, a bunch of us at Capcom have piled into a league, with each post game recapped with a email flurry, chock full of replay links like this one, where I got revenge on fellow Capcom employee Dean Borgus with a last minute touchdown pass with 0:00 on the clock:

The thing that makes me even happier is that Age of Booty and Flock are going to be chock full of their own flavor of community features (so official sounding, isn't it?), most of which are about as hearty as downloadable games get; Map Editors, Map Servers, Party-based multiplayer... we love this stuff and we're going to continue to pile in features that help our players talk to each other in different ways as we continue to get more and more steam..

Until those come out, I'll try to get a couple more Madden victories on Morgan Gray. Right now my Packers are up on his San Diego Chargers 3 games to 2.

So what does it for you? What are some of your favorite community like features that you think really make a great game even better?