Madden NFL 07

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The pigskin powerhouse is back for another season of play, but did EA drop the ball with the DS port?

Words: David Chapman, GamesRadar US

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Though the series hasn't had an easy time on DS, on the surface, Madden NFL 07 seems to stack up pretty well when compared to its console counterparts. Once the game starts, though, some big holes open up in the game's defensive line.

But first, the good: there's a huge feature list with enough options to thrill armchair quarterbacks everywhere. Players can take their favorite teams through a single Season mode, or build a lasting legacy in the game's Franchise mode. You've got Exhibition (play now), custom leagues and tournaments, practice, mini-camp and two-minute drills. If you have four Madden -owning players in the same room, they can compete wirelessly. And for fans who want to really get their hands dirty, the game features a surprisingly deep set of options for creating custom plays and teams from scratch.

Previous Maddens didn't exactly push any visual boundaries on Nintendo's dual screen handheld. We expected Madden to look at least marginally better this time around. It does, but it still looks way too much like a Playstation One game, with illegible numbers and blocky players who blur into a mess of color once the ball is snapped and the game starts moving. This murkiness isn't just a visual fault, either - it makes both running and passing more challenging because it's tougher to make out which defenders are running where. We had better luck tracking our players' movements by watching the X's and O's conveniently laid out on the top screen.