Madden NFL 09

Considering the general state of fitness an American footballer has to maintain in order to do his job properly, it's somewhat ironic that EA should have picked someone as portly as John Madden to promote its long-running line of gridiron video games.

The stocky commentator has presided over the lucrative franchise for two glorious decades and has witnessed the games that bear his name shift millions upon millions of copies. Not bad going for someone who looks like they'd struggle to catch a bus, let alone a ludicrously optimistic 'Hail Mary' pass.

But we're being deliberately obtuse here; Madden is of course involved because his mind is one gigantic American Football playbook and his unique insight is one of the key reasons why this franchise is still dominating the opposition after twenty updates.

However, while the Madden NFL series regularly tops the charts in the US of A, it's a somewhat different proposition on this side of the Atlantic. Granted, the crusty old 16-bit versions were well-liked, but more recently the series has struggled to gain acceptance here in Blighty, and with good reason - we don't understand it because it's not our national sport. Will this 2009 version do anything to buck the trend?

Just like stablemate FIFA, Madden NFL is subject to yearly updates that tend to be practically identical save for some updated statistics. Sure, there are improvements and additions here, but they're worryingly piecemeal. The most apparent is the 'Rookie' mode, which seems to have been inspired by the basic 'Family Play' controls witnessed in the Wii Madden NFL titles.

The daunting 'standard' interface is pared down to something more manageable if you're new to the game; when you're on the offensive you only have to concern yourself with three main buttons – Circle to feint, Square to dive and X to perform other context-sensitive moves, such as evading tackles and so forth.

When you're on defence (for those of you not familiar with American Football parlance, that basically means you're not in possession of the lemon-shaped ball), Circle switches player control, Square is dive (again) and X activates tackles. Throwing of the ball is also simplified; all that is required is for you to push the direction you wish to hurl the ball in and stab the X button.

Compared to the normal control setup this is blissfully straightforward and goes a long way to making the game more pleasurable, but as you might expect this comfort comes at the expense of true control. If you really want to be in charge of what happens on the pitch then it's a wise idea to advance to the standard controls as soon as you get the hang of things – otherwise you're essentially only playing half the game.

American Football has a reputation for being incredibly deep and tactical and Madden NFL 09 reflects this; the number of different plays for any given situation is truly staggering, and that's not all – you can also decide on which playbook (which basically means the style of play) you wish to use. We're no experts on the subject but we found that selecting Madden's own tome of tactics usually yielded the best results, although we have to admit it's rather amusing to hear him lambaste his own strategy via the in-game commentary.

If you're a fan of last year's effort then, Rookie mode aside, nothing much here will surprise you. The skill-testing mini-games make a return, as does the Superstar Challenge, which recounts classic moments from the past season (as you might expect these challenges have been updated to reflect the fact that we've all aged a year since Madden NFL 08).

These additional features are all well and good but the aspect that is going to consume most of your time is unquestionably the Franchise mode. Sadly, it's literally indistinguishable from the one in last year's effort, but is still massively enjoyable and surprisingly deep.

In terms of presentation Madden NFL 09 boasts typically polished EA production, with licensed tunes blaring out over immaculately designed menus. The in-game graphics are excellent - just as they were in the version released 12 months ago - and the whole thing trundles along very nicely, with only the mildest hint of slowdown appearing when the action really hots up.

Sadly, loading times are something of a pain; not only do you have to endure a lengthy pause whenever you start the game, but there are sizable waiting periods in between each menu screen, and loading up a match seems to take forever. EA has attempted to mitigate this issue by featuring trivia questions on the pre-match loading screen, but this does little to dent the depressingly protracted wait.

To make matters substantially worse the multiplayer side of Madden NFL 09 is hilariously broken. Online multiplayer suffers from some of the worst lag we've yet witnessed in a PSP game - it's not unusual to find the game freezing in what feels like 'bullet time' before lurching back into the thick of the action. Given the fast-paced nature of the sport this proves to be immensely frustrating and renders the infrastructure mode almost entirely superfluous.

Ad-hoc mode fares much better, naturally eliminating the troublesome lag, but tracking down someone else who has a copy of this game in the UK is clearly going to be harder than locating a potential rival on FIFA 09.

If we sound like we're being particularly negative then forgive us; despite the repetition Madden NFL 09 is a decent simulation of the sport and will undoubtedly please gridiron fanatics - the caveat being that if you've played last year's edition then there really is no point in picking this one up too. The Rookie mode is clearly intended to introduce the series to new players rather than entice seasoned Madden NFL veterans and outside of this, there's precious little new content to speak of.