Last year, EA Sports brought its hit football franchise Madden to the iPhone and iPod Touch — the game went on to become one of the top-selling iOS games of 2009, and has since racked up a total of nearly 13,000 reviews. Later this week, the gaming powerhouse will be bringing the virtual gridiron to a device that’s even better suited for its touchscreen gameplay: the iPad.
Madden 2011 will be released for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch this Tuesday (pricing details haven’t been announced, but the iPad version will likely go for around $12, and the iPhone version will be less expensive). We sat down with Jeremy Gross, a Producer at EA Mobile, who gave us a walkthrough of the final version of the game.
As you’d expect, Madden 2011 sports a number of new features over last year’s game, and they’re designed to help the game cater to both hardcore Madden fans and novices. The game includes full playbooks, stat tracking and a full season mode, but if you’re just looking for a quick diversion, you can optionally set the AI to call plays for you, giving Madden more of an arcade-style pace.
If you’re looking to take a hands-on approach, you can create ‘hot routes’, which let you drag your finger to dictate exactly what route you want each of your players to take. These were available on last year’s iPhone version, but the iPad’s larger screen size makes this surprisingly intuitive (and fun), especially compared to the convoluted control schemes you’ll typically find on console football games.
Check out the video above for more details. And for more great iOS games, check out our guide to the top 30 iPhone games so far this year.