Despite the increasingly worrying chances that there may be a shortened or non-existent football season this year, EA Sports is, of course, still plowing ahead with a new "Madden" game. For those of you who don't purchase each annual installment on blind faith and/or a desire for updated rosters, you should know that there are some gameplay additions to "Madden NFL 12." The biggest one by far is something called Dynamic Player Performance.
If you're thinking Dynamic Player Performance sounds like marketing jargon, you're completely right, but it does actually have an impact on the game. Here's the idea: Let's say you're playing as Eli Manning and you start the game with a passing accuracy of 80. In previous "Madden" games, you could be sacked 10 times in the first quarter and that accuracy rating would never change, unless Manning was injured.
With DPP, the events of the game can actually cause a player's performance to change. So those 10 sacks against Manning in the first quarter might actually give him worse pocket presence and cause him to throw the ball away more. Thankfully it's not just a negative reaction. If your player makes, say, a 30-yard pass for a touchdown, their ratings might actually increase because their confidence is boosted from the play.
A key component of this is which player you're talking about. Certain players, like Jay Cutler, are known for being hot-headed and streaky, having an amazing game one week and a terrible game the next. These players will be more affected by DPP because they play the game more emotionally. On the flip side, a player like Drew Brees is much more consistent, so a few sacks isn't going to affect his passer rating too much.
The idea is to make the players in "Madden NFL 12" feel more like their real-world counterparts, instead of just mindless, stat-driven robots. They're still mindless stat-driven robots, but those stats can now change based on what's going on in the game, which is rather interesting. Whether it's enough to make up for the lack of real life football...that's a tougher question.