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| Source // PlayStation |
There was a time, brief though it may have been, where I was actually interested in American Football. I'm not sure where it came from, but I suspect it had something to do with the Super Bowl being on the BBC and a demo of Madden NFL 11 for the PlayStation 3.
My trophy list would suggest I played it for at least a week in late 2010, but that's a little too late for this 1001 list. We need to go back just one yearly instalment to Madden NFL 10, which changed the game of videogame Handegg like nothing else.
Well, I mean, I guess. I've no idea what goes on in the world of American Football, even having briefly followed it, and you know what sports games are like - when was the defensive AI feature introduced, what changes did the career mode get, what was the game-breaking exploit in this one. I don't know, let's just hit the field and see what happens.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Fun Times
I've been in such a PlayStation 3 frame of mind recently that I was amazed to find out that Madden NFL 10 was released on a DVD, not a Blu-Ray, and then of course I realised that I had the Xbox 360 version. The differences between the two consoles are this point aren't worth quibbling over, and Madden is Madden no matter where you find it.
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| Source // PlayStation |
If you're here for screenshots of the in-game action, you've come to the wrong place. I'd love to show you some, but nobody seems to care about in-game stuff from Madden NFL 10, so just look at some screenshots of more recent releases, but imagine them looking a bit worse. Blockier, a bit robotic in their animation, a massive drop in detail if you're not a player and so on.
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| Source // PlayStation |
The era of making your sports games look like what you see on the TV is in full swing by this point, and Madden NFL 10 continues to present the entire NFL (and a bunch of historical stuff for fans to dig into) with all the crisp HUD stylings of an EA Sports title.
For those of us who don't know their Panthers from their Jaguars, the number of names, stats, and playbooks are staggeringly deep, as they usually are for a Madden game. I know what next to none of them actually represent, however, so going into the franchise mode to take a team through a season and onto the Super Bowl, complete with picking up new players and managing injuries and whatnot perhaps isn't the best place for me to start, but it's the big deal mode when it comes to Madden, so why not?
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| Source // PlayStation |
Lining up on the field, the commentators setting the scene and the TV-like presentation doing its best to convince you how cool a spectacle the sport is, you're given a playbook to pick a play from, and the mind-games can begin.
Now, I don't know too much about American Football, as I continue to stress, but I know enough to know that Tom Brady throws good, and so I'm going to opt for some plays that involve lots of options for me to throw to.
Once the ball is snapped into his possession, the pocket starts to close and my wide receivers set about on their pre-planned runs, and you get the briefest of windows to scan the field ahead and pick out your target before getting sacked and losing ground.
It is one of the coolest things about a Madden game for someone new to the sport. All of a sudden, you've got to make a decision that will either help your team out or cause you more problems, only all the decisions you can choose from are in motion, running in different directions, assigned to different buttons on the controller.
Was that guy in the open assigned to the X button like you hope? He was, excellent. And he caught it, too. Now how quickly can I make a useful decision for this guy, too?
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| Source // PlayStation |
Eventually, I learned that the right stick will shimmy and spin your player to avoid incoming blocks and tackles, which gave me a little more time on the ball before the new animations of the Pro-Tak system took over.
It's a typically EA-sounding name, but it is basically a system where as many as nine players can collide into and grab onto one another in an attempt to wrestle a player to the ground to end the play, and for the most part, it looks quite realistic too.
All of the animations will get better in time, of course, but Madden NFL 10, like FIFA 10, is still playable today, but you do feel all the quirks and the jank if you've played more recent versions.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Final Word
I've only played a quick match - well, it took a while with all the stoppages and highlights and cutaways to blokes yelling on the phone, but it was one quick match - and I can come away knowing that Madden NFL 10 is still playable, but probably shouldn't be your first entry to the series.
Once again it's really hard to suggest you go and play it because yearly sports titles blur together, and someone who doesn't know what the significance of a Quarterback's dropback animation is won't give anybody a good idea of what's going on here.
But I can see multiple game modes, though online offerings are no more, so you can find your favourites and make them into undefeatable football machines, or just have a play around with a weird sport that is part rugby, part chess.
I may never understand it fully, but once in a while I think to myself "I wonder what's happening in that crazy world." I just don't think about it often enough to want to buy a Madden title and play it for any length of time, it seems, but I guess if you're not a fan of football, you could be a fan of this football.
Seen one Madden, seen them all. But do see at least one.
Fun Facts
This was the first Madden title to have two cover stars. Were they struck by the curse? I don't know. I have no idea who they are. Some folks from the Steelers and the Cardinals, though. I've learned that much about the sport, at least.
Madden NFL 10, developed by EA Tiburon, first released in 2009.
Version played: Xbox 360, 2009.