REVIEW: MADDEN 2010

by Brendan Cole

What’s the easiest sport to adapt for gaming?

Stick and ball games such as tennis, baseball and golf have obvious advantages but are often too easily mastered and can after a time boil down to tedious and repetitive ‘safe’ gameplay.

Tiger Woods Golf always ends up being so BORING......

Some will obviously say football (soccer) - fluent, cerebral and at its best highly demanding - is the best transfer and they would have a point.

But for a certain type of sports game fan, American Football ticks more boxes.

Certainly when compared to basketball, rugby, Aussie Rules or Gaelic Football, American Football has huge natural advantages, starting with the closed off ‘play by play’ nature of the rules that means nobody needs to worry about having any single incident go beyond around ten seconds or so.

But there’s lots more to like. Within each play, the variety and complexity are dazzling. Run or pass? Short or deep? Blitz, man or zone defence? (anyone baffled by the above needs to stay in more...) and after the snap, American Football forces the user to make quick decisions that matter. In terms of satisfaction, a key run stop, a big play - you can’t beat an 80 yard screen pass - or a solidly constructed 10 play drive to win by a point in the fourth quarter are all on the thrill menu. Getting closed out by a one yard rush with 1:47 and no timeouts to go is, on the other, briefly soul destroying......

Egg-chasers stuck with Madden......

Until somebody develops a decent rugby game (due to numerous factors relating to cost, potential market and development difficulty, rugby has yet to be really well translated to the console; RWC 2011 is the next big hope), Ireland’s egg chasing enthusiasts are stuck with Madden.

2010 is the latest update of the long running series.

In terms of presentation, a certain amount of the ersatz high tech glitz and glam that buttressed 2009 has been stripped away and a more old school philosophy adopted.

On the field, too, things have been stripped back a touch. For defenders, the hit stick (R3) takes over many of the functions that were controlled by L1 and R1 in 2009 - e.g. pushing and spinning on the line of scrimmage.

Compared to the slightly simplistic shoving contests at the line that were the norm in previous versions, and the slightly over complex use of R1 and L1 in ’09, the battle up front is much more varied and satisfying.

In the secondary, the calibration between allowing a passing game to happen and making sure defenders get enough of a chance to have a bite at the cherry has also been carefully rendered. Risky plays feel risky and interceptions happen for a reason.

Running back play is also fun. R3 again provides an easy to use but difficult to master avenue into the world of spectacular jukes and fakes that American Football does best.

Thankfully, the infuriating tendency of wide receivers to run stupidly and pointlessly run out over the sideline (see 2009) has been substantially curbed if not quite fully eradicated. Player controlled defensive play in the secondary is also much more intuitive and less likely to result in ridiculous 'pass interference' calls, and tackling remains a decent challenge.

Unbeatable AI.....grrrrr!

There are one or two little glitches. A new feature sees players compete on the ground for fumbles through furious button pressing is a good idea, but in practice, the AI is pretty unbeatable at this no matter what the level.

Maybe they should have gone with an R3 based ‘follow the screen prompts’ wrestle?

Commentary has not been updated all that much from ’09 and Chris Collinsworth and John Madden (anyone remember ‘those big ‘ol defensive linemen!’) speak at the same time as each other at times, rendering both unintelligible. At least it's a change.

That said, Madden’s explanations of what each defence is intended to do are new and were something of a revelation to this long time American Football fan. For better or worse, I now know my Cover 2 from my Double Z an awful lot better.

To sum up: hardcore fans will love though casual players of 2009 may find that not quite enough has been improved to justify another outlay though even they might well be pleasantly surprised.

For anyone who enjoyed has Madden in the past but hasn't picked it up in a few years, or is a newcomer this is just about the perfect version to get into the mix with.

Score: 87%