The iPhone has proven that it has the capability to compete with the other big boys in the mobile gaming space.  With flagship titles such as Assassin’s Creed and Tiger Woods, developers are not shying away from the brainchild of Apple.  However, when EA released this year’s version of Madden 2010 on the device, I was fearful.  Fearful that a franchise with such a strong following, and one that just released possibly the best console version this year on the PS3 and Xbox 360, was going to fall flat on its face with an under performing version on the iPhone.  Well, after playing through one season with the dominant Miami Dolphins (yeah, I said dominant) I can safely say that EA delivered another great addition to their Madden library.

The most important aspect (and biggest change) with this mobile version is in the controls.  It plays similar to many other games on the platform, with a virtual joystick on the bottom-left of the screen, and some move buttons on the bottom-right. However, with so many moves to pull off in a football game, EA decided to include a special “clock” button which slows down the gameplay for  2-3 seconds.  Activating this on either defense or offense brings up multiple special moves such as juke, dive, or block.  The mechanism sounds difficult and cumbersome, but after a couple of games you will find yourself using and perfecting the new control scheme.  Other than the controls, everything else is pretty up to par with the Madden franchise:  slick menus, banging rock soundtrack, crisp/good graphics (for the iPhone) and deep playbooks.

On the downside, you won’t find any lengthy Franchise mode.  Only a single season run through, which for an iPhone game, is passable.  There is also a lack of any multiplayer mode, which is a disappointment, but for Madden’s freshman year on the iPhone, we can let it slide and hope for an update in the near future, which brings me to my biggest fear with Madden moving forward.  With console sports games, we assume that all the standard features, such as multiplayer, franchise and updated rosters, are always included in the newest years game.  However, with the iPhone, it seems users are accustomed to receiving multiple updates for games they purchase, rather than waiting a entire year to buy a whole new game.  Real Soccer 2010 was just released as a full retail app.  Yes the game is substantially better, but are people going to want to continue to buy a $9.99 updated game every year, while their current version is still passable if they just updated some small portions of it?  Let’s just hope these games will see updates throughout the year to make all us paying consumers happy.

Whether you want to indulge in a full season, or just a quick game, Madden is THE football game experience for the iPhone.  Add in the ability to quit or answer a call at any point during gameplay and have it reboot right where you left off, you never feel like you have to invest a full games worth of football.  At a reasonable price point of $9.99, you are definitely getting your money’s worth, especially if EA decides to update the game with WiFi multiplayer or maybe even a deep franchise mode.  That may be wishful thinking, but even without those upgrades, EA has created a great game of pigskin.