The last time I had anything to do with football (American rules thereof, for our international readers now fanning your noses fretfully at my uncultured and barbaric ways) was the 90s, mostly centered around Mutant League Football (Sega Genesis), Front Page Sports Football (PC) and The Waterboy (film). This perhaps makes me EA’s target audience for this installment in the Madden series, as the Wii version has several features that try to appeal to more in-depth players, but also many changes to let the less experienced get right in and play. They mostly succeeded, and the result is a game that is a fairly competent football title that has some rough spots to bear in mind.

’Something for everyone’ seems to be the main idea here, as there are several play modes of varying complexity, along with different ways to use the controls. It’s easy enough to jump into an NFL regulation 11 on 11 game, or a much faster paced 5 on 5 game where it’s easy to gain yardage and score. Likewise, you can use button combinations for most activities like running, passing, shaking defenders, and making tackles... but you can also use the Wiimote for some things through a mix of ’point and click’ methods to tell your team what to do, or even replacing the button presses for some things like passing. Even calling plays can range from extremely simple to fully involved; you can let John Madden recommend a play, pick a very basic play-type, use an intermediate playbook, or a fully detailed one. EA has gone to significant efforts to make sure everyone can play this game fairly well, and they deserve credit for that.

This variety carries over to the modes you can select. It’s easy enough to play a single standard game, or even play a whole season taking your team of choice to the Super Bowl. On the other hand, there are a series of quick mini-games designed to teach you important skills in the game and let you learn the controls in a hands-on way... or perhaps you’d rather play a more ’party game’ oriented take on things, adding wacky rules like turbo speed or frequent fumbles. There is even a mode for using the Wiimote to directly aid another player in various ways, like using the pointer to knock opponents away from them. I suspect this makes the game sort of a "Madden mainstream edition" rather than a more serious sim, but I admit I can’t be entirely sure how this game will feel to enthusiasts.

Madden NFL 10’s new visual style on the Wii is worth noting. It has been covered in several news pieces and is the subject of a lot of commentary. Basically (and wisely) admitting the Wii cannot keep up with the visuals of the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, EA took this version’s visuals in a more ’stylized’ direction, meaning disproportional limbs and other traits to exaggerate the athletes’ designs. It looks ridiculous in screenshots, but I was surprised to see that it actually works okay in-game; the animation is smooth and the visual design isn’t distracting, so EA’s gambit seemed to pay off here. There are other things to fault in this game, but the graphics aren’t really all that bad.

That said, there are some problems. The Superstar mode is particularly bad, requiring you to unlock it through various means and then turning out to be virtually unplayable in some cases. The idea of this mode is that you create your own player and primarily control him during the NFL season (this is taken so far that you don’t even call plays; you’re not the team’s coach, after all), which sounds great at first. The problem is that some positions, such as quarterback, are given a camera angle that is just short of useless. I would not call it truly impossible to play Superstar mode in these positions, but it comes close and it’s definitely not fun.

Online play is also available and seems to work well enough, though there are some caveats. First, I admit I wasn’t able to test this in-depth and it wasn’t even the game’s fault... it was the players. Every single opponent I played ’ragequit’ in the middle of the game, often as soon as their first possession failed to end in a touchdown. This means that while every game I played felt reasonably responsive, they also tended to last no more than two minutes. Second, this game’s online mode goes through EA’s servers more than it does Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection despite the WFC logo on the box. Should you care? That depends; you’ll be forced to agree to an End User License Agreement with EA, and many features won’t work unless you register an account with them. Guest logins are permitted and let you play basic unranked games, but this didn’t thrill me. Neither did the notice that they can ’retire’ online play with 30 days notice or 30 days after the 2009-2010 NFL season is over. Some people may not mind these issues, but others might and I felt it was worth pointing out.

Ultimately, Madden NFL 10 on Wii is a competent football game. I do not know how well it will appeal to diehard sim fans, and that crowd may wish to rent it. But as someone who is very familiar with the rules of football but has had nothing to do with it in over a decade, I found the game reasonably in-depth and easily accessible. While I’m not happy with how EA laid out their online play and a few modes are just short of unplayable, the core game works and may be worth your time.