Polished, officially licenced iPad NFL game

Madden NFL 11 HD is the latest version of the classic football sim series for iOS. The game combines stunning graphics with realistic gameplay to deliver an enthralling football experience.

From the glossy game menu screens with awesome soundtracks to the smooth in-game visuals and thorough commentary, Madden NFL 11 HD is the best looking game of the popular series to date. It even eclipses Gameloft’s excellent NFL 2011 in this respect. The iPad version of the game is significantly crisper than the iPhone version, making for a more console-like experience.

There are four game modes in Madden NFL 11 HD, including exhibition, season mode, playoffs and multiplayer over Bluetooth. The game features all the official NFL rosters, which can be updated during the course of the season.

Season mode in Madden NFL 11 HD allows you to trade players, but this lacks intelligence and realism: it’s just too easy to get a whole bunch of superstars to join your team.

Gameplay features

In terms of gameplay, Madden NFL 11 HD adds a couple of new features to the already absorbing, in-depth on-field controls. You still control individual players with an on-screen analog stick, and the action buttons are situated on the right. Likewise, the wonderful simple flick to kick system is still employed.

Total Defensive Control is perhaps the most interesting of the new gameplay features in Madden NFL 11 HD. This lets you pause the game while a play is taking place and assign commands to individual players on your defense, such as blitzing, charging or blocking selected guys on the opposing team.

Offensive play

Unfortunately, this useful feature is only reserved for defensive play in Madden NFL 11 HD and you get no such precision controls when attacking. However, you are able to draw out hot routes to modify plays, which can be saved to use as audibles at a later point.

Calling plays is easy thanks to Madden NFL 11 HD’s GameFlow system. This allows you to cycle through available plays in a very simple way. Madden purists may be put off with the rather basic nature of this system when compared with the original GameFlow.

Be warned that we spotted more than a few bugs when testing version 1.0 of Madden NFL 11 HD. They included freezes, crashes, and a bizarre bug that turned all of the players into Olin Kreutz!

Madden NFL 11 HD is the best looking iPhone football game in history – and it’s great fun to play too.

Various bug fixes to enhance application stability

Changes

• Various bug fixes to enhance application stability