After counting down the tenth through sixth best new Madden 2009 features on Friday, today we'll be looking at the top five new features ...

#5 Formation Specific Audibles
When coupled with the ability to create your own plays, formation specific audibles is going to give defenses absolute fits in Madden 2009. So much of the game of football is making the right adjustments, and this feature gives gamers the complete power to make those necessary quick adjustments at the line.

In the past you could make sly adjustments by hotrouting individual players, or flipping a play from one side to the other, but often if you wanted to call a full on audible it would lead to players running and shifting all over the place, tipping off your opponent to exactly what was taking place.

Formation specific audible will give you the opportunity to take audibles to the next level. Each play you get to confidently walk up to the line to get a look at the defense knowing that if you don’t like the play you’ve called you now have six plays to quickly and quietly adjust to, with your opponent being none the wiser.

Depending on how you play, and who you play against, this feature may be much higher than #5. I know for those hardcore online guys this is probably #2, behind online leagues, if not #1 because of the monumental advantage that it will give to your offense.

#4 Adaptive Difficulty Engine
For years now people have been tweaking and playing with sliders seemingly to no end hoping to create that perfect gaming experience. This year EA looks to change that for good.

Now when you start your profile you’ll be introduced into a virtual world where you’ll have to test your skills to find out just where you fit in for passing and rushing, both on offense and defense.

While I am not a fan of the glowing players or the virtual world backdrop I am a fan of the concept that we won’t be stuck just in Rookie, Pro, All-Pro or All-Madden.

This is a fantastic feature because it allows us to play at different levels of difficulty for different things. Personally I know that I am a much better passer than runner, I’d like to think that the run blocking might be some of the reason for that, but I know that it’s much easier for me to get my yards through the air.

Assuming the system works correctly it will recognize this and place me at All-Pro or All-Madden in passing, while possibly leaving me at Pro for rushing, making it easier for me to pick up the yards on the ground.

It’ll be interesting to see how well this feature works, since the developers have taken on a monumental task here. If it works as well as they’re hoping it will revolutionize the difficulty settings for sports games.

Worse case scenario the virtual training center doesn’t rank us properly and they at least allow us to better set the level of difficulty ourselves.

#3 Passing Camera
This feature has to be high on the list because of the plain and simple fact it affects such a high number of plays in every game.

When Madden came to next gen it took a step back in many areas - the camera systems being one of those. Previously we’d had multiple cameras to choose from for gameplay or even the option to customize our own. On next gen we were stuck with the one that they set as default.

In these past couple of years it has been a constant guessing game of what’s happening on the outsides of the field. On offense you can try to take a look at what the corners are doing before the snap, then you might get a split second peak, but after that you’re on your own praying they reacted how you anticipated.

On defense you’ve been limited on who you can control effectively. If you’re a linebacker or corner and need to cover a man or a zone in the flat then you’re pretty much out of luck and doing it blind.

Now with the addition of the new passing camera we should have an enormous hole in the game filled as we’ll be able to actually see what’s going on in those areas of the field.

#2 Online Leagues
Getting online leagues into the game has been something that gamers have been clamoring about for years. Leagues are a huge addition to the game because it saves gamers the hassle of creating their own leagues, and having to run things through their own web sites or premade sites.

There will be no more need to enter your own statistics after every game, and players will finally be able to make trades online in their leagues.

While the limits of online leagues are a bit like a let down after seeing the features of online dynasties in NCAA Football, but it’s a big improvement over not having any sort of online league action it in the game.

#1 The Presentation
Presentation has always seemed to have been an extreme afterthought in Madden. This was made worse by NFL 2k5, which spoiled gamers with remarkable all around presentation.

This year the developers have said that presentation was at the top of their list for things they wanted to improve, and from what we’ve seen to this point it looks like they actually delivered. They have added new commentary, a more broadcast look to the game, and picture-in-picture play calling, letting you call your plays while also looking at stats and replays.

I’m convinced that after hearing years of complaints about the commentary on the previous gen games, EA decided that it was payback time and brought us the EA Sports Radio announcer so we could appreciate what we had in the past.

Three years later they’ve decided we’ve suffered enough and the punishment will finally end. Tom Hammond and Chris Collinsworth will be taking over the commentary this year to give more of a broadcast feel.

When this commentary team was announced I immediately assumed that Collinsworth was going to be the anchor dragging this team down, but after watching the videos I was shocked to see that I was wrong. Hammond could use much more enthusiasm in his play-by-play, however so far Collinsworth sounds good as the color commentator. While it might not be the best commentating we’ve heard in a sports game, it will be a much needed improvement over the last couple installments of Madden.

When you combine the new commentary with all the other visual improvements throughout the game they total up to a monumental jump for Madden in the presentation department. I’m not sure that this jump will overtake the bar set by NFL 2k5, but it should at least bring it close and pull it light years ahead of Madden has been.

Overall the work that the Madden team has put in this year is evident and should lead to a large improvement in many areas of the game. Hopefully we’ll continue to see this big of an effort each year from EA in the future to push this game to the pinnacle of sports gaming.