IPod Applications Reviews:With NFL 2010 Everyday Is A Sunday

NFL 2010, the first full-featured football game specifically for the iPhone and iPod Touch, has been released earlier than expected by Gameloft. With a graphic style similar to Madden, it is hard not to compare NFL 2010 to the king of all that is football. Fortunately for mobile gamers, NFL 2010 holds up quite well.

NFL 2010 offers 4 different game modes: Quick Play, Exhibition, Season, and Playoffs. Quick Play uses your favorite team preference to match you up against a random opponent without a whole lot of setup. It’s the quickest way to go from start to snap that there is. Exhibition allows you to set up a single game, choosing teams and other options, such as quarter length and difficulty level. Season allows you to pick a team and follow them through a full season, playing that team’s actual 2009 scheduled opponents. Results of each game will affect your overall record, which could make-or-break your run at the Super Bowl. Would you rather skip all the hard work and go for the glory? Playoff mode allows you to do just that. There is no quicker way to the world’s biggest stage. Gameloft was able to get the rights to use the actual team and player names, so all of your favorites are here. Noticeably absent is a Franchise mode, where free agency, trades, and the like can really mix things up.

Attention to detail is clearly evident, as teams and players are all ranked, all of the NFL stadiums are present, and there are tons of customization options, including different uniforms, etc. An announcer reads canned play-by-play responses over the action, which sometimes leads to some odd statements, but it’s funnier than it is annoying. Football games live or die by their controls. So far, NFL 2010 is hanging in there. While the controls take some getting used to, most gamers should adapt quickly. That does not, however, mean that they will always like what they can and cannot do. One interesting instance occurs when you are running and about to be tackled. Sometimes, the action will stop and action buttons will appear, giving you the option to juke, spin, or truck the tackler. Tap an option and see how it works out for you. There is no speed burst button, despite my efforts to keep tapping the screen as if there was one. The ability to stiff arm or juke a defender at will is also absent, unless an option button pops up, which can be frustrating. Passing is also a bit different. On a passing play, each eligible receiver has a different symbol over his head, colored red, yellow, or green. Green players are likely to make the catch if the ball is thrown to them. Red players will likely miss or have the ball intercepted. Tap on the receiver’s symbol to pass, or tap the shoe icon to have the QB scramble. You can also throw the ball away by tapping another button. While this works well, the resulting play is usually not as expected. We’ve seen lots of wide open players completely miss the pass. Throwing over the middle is extremely difficult, forcing you to try to throw outside for better completion percentages. Also, with all of the receivers running around downfield, it is easy to hit the wrong receiver button accidentally. It appears that some tweaking is necessary, as should be expected.

Play selection is pretty decent, offering basic plays and advanced plays. Basic plays allow the gamer to choose whether to run or pass without worrying about formations. There are a couple of simple plays of each kind to choose from. For the more serious football fan, the advanced plays option allows you to choose your formation and then choose from several running and passing plays within each formation. These work well for the most part, though it might be nice if, after each play, you were returned to the screen with the last chosen play, instead of having to go through all of the levels each time. Also, on 4th down, the game does not always default to special teams plays in expectation of a punt of field goal attempt. Therefore, it becomes very important to pay attention to the down, as you may need to select these options yourself.

Graphically, the game looks gorgeous. This is the closest thing to Madden that we’ve seen. Sounds are good, with all of the expected football sound effects. Controls work well and are responsive. It just seems that it is lacking some of the functionality necessary to make us feel as if we have control over the plays. Often, it feels like we are simply watching them unfold as we’ve set them up. In fact, the plays where we felt like we had the most control were kicking plays, which utilize two gauges, one for aiming and one for power. This scheme works especially well.
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With Madden 10 for the iPhone and iPod Touch currently unreleased as of this writing, there is nothing quite like NFL 2010 available in the app store. Replayability is huge, as is expected in a football game. Any given Sunday, right? For what it’s worth, NFL 2010 looks great and plays well for a first effort. We expect to play this one for some time. While a little pricey at $7.99, it seems downright cheap when you consider that any similar console version will likely start around $50. NFL 2010 is a solid 4-Dimple touchdown celebration of a game.

NFL 2010 gets our AppSmile 4-Dimple rating:

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