Last year’s Madden 10 for the iPhone spoke multitudes regarding the iDevice’s portable gaming power. With the sequel, get blown away!

Madden 11 iPhone ($7.99) | iPad ($12.99)

Back when the AppStore started, I doubt anyone would’ve expected a football game for the iPhone. Madden 10 came out with a bang. EA Mobile now builds on everything best about the original and adds tons of cool features.

Presentation

Are you kidding me? If you own an iPhone 4 and don’t have this, be ashamed of yourself. The graphics on this baby on the iPhone 4 screams high definition. From the load screen to in game menus and the actual gameplay, everything is in retina display.

The iPad graphics for me outdo the iPhone version though. Even though I notice more triangles if you get really picky, nothing beats playing a football game on a 9inch screen!

Controls

For both versions, EA maintained the touch control layout used in last year’s outing. If you’ve played Madden 10, hot routes on Madden 11 finally allows customization even after a play is called. That’s right, you can simply pause the game and draw routes whether you’re on offense or defense.

Gameplay

Surprise surprise! Madden NFL 11 is about American Football. I’m not here to tell you how to play the sport because otherwise you won’t be reading this all, had you not known the sport. The greatest feature for Madden 11? GameFlow! I’d like to call this feature “football for beginners”.

I’m not a football fan so the player calls shown nested through various play screens all look the same to me. With this trustworthy feature you can turn on and off before each play, I can be assured Madden 11 is picking the right moves for me.

Madden also lets you skip through crowd cheers, showoff dances and other animations if you simply just want to play the game. There’s an outlet for DLC but is only currently a host to the always free roster update.

Suggestions

iPhone 4 Frame Rate. I’m not quite sure what happened though the game drops a tiny bit on the iPhone 4. I don’t think this would be that hard to fix, so yes, please do issue a fix.

Madden Play Suggestions. This feature is on the console versions of this game. Compared to gameflow where you absolutely have no option at all, Madden Suggestions suggests five play options from you to choose from.

Conclusion

When choosing over Madden NFL 11 to Gameloft’s NFL 2011, just like last year, Madden NFL 11 remains to be the definitive football gaming even on the iPhone. Some tilt features on NFL 2011 are cool, but with gameflow and overall look of the game, Madden NFL 11 beats it by ten folds.

If you’re jonesing for some football before the season officially kicks off, this is the perfect game to tide you over while on the go.