Madden 10's Main Menu

Games are fun! Well, they’re supposed to be, anyways… I’ve tried a lot of garbage games on my iPod Touch. Most of them are freebie games that I would download, play for a good 5 minutes and that would be it. Bye bye. Games that you have to pay for become a little bit dicey. I mean, throw down $10 on a game and find out it’s a dog? Great. So when EA released Madden 10 for the iPhone/iPod touch I was a little skeptical. I mean, how good could a game that has been shrunk down to fit a 3 inch screen that doesn’t have any real controls be? Well, pretty good it seems.

I started playing Madden and was really upset at first. I was having an awful time controlling the players, and it had just seemed… not fully baked to me. So, I set the game aside for a couple of days and had written it off as bad. Well, I’m glad I picked it back up because after spending a few minutes getting used to the control scheme, it has really taken off and become quite a good game.

Obviously the graphics are not going to be the same as on a console system, but for a 3 inch screen, how detailed do they need to be? The game relies on touch-screen controls, which at first are strange to use. You move the selected player around using the thumb control for your left hand and the right hand thumb is for your other controls (such as slo-mo, dive, juke, etc.). Making sure that you don’t cover the screen with your hands while you play is a primary concern when starting out, but you will get the hang of it after about 10 minutes of play.

Game screen looks pretty good.

I liked that all the actual NFL teams, their rosters and even their stadiums are in this game. It’s fun to have Tom Brady throwing the long ball to Randy Moss to crush the Dolphins… just like in real life. Also, like in real life, I get to hear Chris Collinsworth, AL Michaels and John Madden repeat the same cliche’s over and over again. Fortunately, that can be turned off, sadly, the same can’t be said for the Buccaneers. Games are automatically paused when you hit the home button to return to the iPod’s main menu. When you launch Madden, it asks if you want to continue your game from where you left off. You can also play in full-season mode as well, with this year’s schedule for the teams.

All in all, I think Madden 10 is a great buy for your iPhone/iPod touch. The game is a large download at 102mb and it costs $9.99. However, you love football games and want an enjoyable alternative for while on to go, I can recommend this game. We’ll give it 4 out of 5 stars!