Madden 10, the 20-year-old king of football games, has finally been released by EA and is now available in the app store. As you might expect, though Gameloft’s NFL2010 was the first on the iPhone and iPod touch, Madden 10 is a solid addition that leaves gamers with a dilemma.
Madden, of course, brings you all of the officially licensed players, teams, and stadiums. As you might expect, Madden offers both Quick Play and Season modes. Quick Play is a simple exhibition game where you choose your teams and jump right in. Season allows you to select a team that you’ll see through an entire season in the hopes of reaching, and ultimately winning, the Super Bowl. In Season mode, Madden allows for a great deal of team tweaking, where players can be traded, free agents signed, and depth charts altered. There is a plethora of statistics available to assist in making those difficult decisions, too.
Madden 10 includes a pretty detailed tutorial that explains the use of all of the buttons. Even if you skip the tutorial and go straight to playing the game, tutorial tips will pop up on the first play through, ensuring that you will fully understand how to play the game. The controls are similar to those employed in NFL2010, with some significant differences. The most notable is the Action Control Time button, which looks like a stopwatch. Tapping this button temporarily slows play to half-speed, allowing you to more easily spot open receivers, find holes to run through, or square up to deliver a bone-crushing hit. While Gameloft’s stop-time feature is automatic and, at times, annoying, EA has made this an option, so you can use it if you want or forget it altogether. Personally, we feel that it adds a fun new dimension to the game and wouldn’t be surprised if this became a staple of not only Madden games, but all football games in the future. Madden also includes the power boost button, sorely missing from its app store rival. Juke and spin buttons are available for your juking and spinning pleasure.
Movements are controlled by a virtual d-pad, which is pretty responsive. Tapping on the screen skips a lot of the filler and fluff (read: player celebrations). Tapping also hikes the ball. Receivers have color-coded symbols indicating their openness (red for covered, yellow for partially covered, green for open). Tapping the receiver’s icon throws the ball. Kicking utilizes a meter that is identical to the Tiger Woods swing meter, which we feel works much better than NFL2010’s kicking scheme. One of the coolest features available in Madden 10 involves drawing hot routes on the fly. Before hiking the ball on a passing play, tap the playbook icon to bring up the current play scheme. Tap a receiver and use your finger to draw a new route for that receiver. It works like a charm and is a lot of fun to utilize. The playbook is pretty extensive, including about 300 plays.
Graphics are good, but not as good as we would have expected. They look like console graphics from some time ago, but do not compare to what we see today. They are adequate for the platform, though. Sounds are decent, with the obligatory John Madden comments and helmet-to-helmet sound effects. Madden 10 allows you to play music from your own library, so you can skip the included tracks if you wish. Controls work well and offer a lot of options with just a simple tap or two.
There are some other notable omissions and additions in the game. One of the most glaring is the omission of a play clock. The new focus on the game appears to be tighter control, through slowing down real-time to avoiding the urgency to quickly call a play. It appears that EA wants us to focus on seeing the best option and making the right call rather than working within the confines of real-life and snap decisions, which we don’t really agree with. The lack of audibles is always frustrating for us, as neither game allows you to change things at the line. There are also no difficulty settings, so this could alienate certain gamers if the AI is too easy or too difficult for their tastes. One thing that they got right was the autosave feature, which brings you back to the beginning of the current play after exiting or taking a call.
Multiplayer should be included in a future update, as well as roster updates, which will add a lot to the game. Replay value is huge. After all, it’s a Madden football game. You know you’ll be playing it until the next one comes out. It is comparable to Gameloft’s NFL2010, though each offers a great gaming experience and some attributes that the other lacks. If you can afford it, you might want to go ahead and get both. Madden 10 rolls into the app store at the expected $9.99 and will likely remain that way for most of the season. Madden hauls in a solid 4-Dimple touchdown pass, taking this grudge match against rival NFL2010 into OT.
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