Every year it's the same. A group of highly paid people spend far too long sitting in a room, eating the most bourgeois of takeaway lunches - sandwiches from M&S's most expensive range, posh crisps with flavours unidentifiable by taste alone, and those heartburn-inducing smoothies made by multi-national companies passing themselves off as communes of tree hugging hippies - trying to decide on one single sentence - the tag line for this year's release. If everyone was being honest, these get-togethers for annual sports franchises would be over in five minutes, with the result being "Look, we were on a quick turnaround so we just fiddled about with last year's game and chucked in a few new features." That isn't the way marketing works, however, and so, for Madden 10, all that expensive food has given us the slogan "Fight for every yard"; and do you know what, it's a pretty good choice, because with this new Madden it's very much a case of one step forward, one step back.

The most important addition to this year's Madden roster is the Online Franchise mode. Once again EA's NCAA Football series has provided a testing ground for new Madden content, and the success of the Online Dynasty mode in NCAA 09 means that its' framework, with a few modifications, has made it's way over to Madden 10. The reasons Online Franchise is a success are firstly its' depth, and secondly the way it has been built from the top down. Almost everything necessary to envelop you in what feels like a real season is present from injuries to trades. The unofficial beta test that took place in NCAA has provided a well proportioned suite of options for use by individual team owners, and the player also chosen to fulfil the duties of League Commissioner. Putting on their best Roger Goodell impression, and taking the law, and their popularity, in their own hands, it's down to the Commissioner to police the 32 teams, each of which can be under human or computer control; ensuring, if they wish, that the odd loophole that the game allows, such the ability to swap the detritus at the bottom of your depth chart for the star players on CPU squads, aren't abused. It's a very good rookie outing for Online Franchise, and hopefully one that will be built on, with Madden 11 and its successors allowing you to transfer leagues and data, as well as developing areas such as scouting and interactions with the media for those who crave the minutia of both the front and coach's offices at the same time.

Another new feature, Online Co-op, is a huge disappointment. Allowing for just two players to take on the computer, regularly providing unfriendly camera angles, and only letting the first player call plays, it should have been so much more, and smacks of having an insufficient amount of development time devoted towards it. It's a similar story with many of the returning features. Superstar mode, in which you can create a player and then compete solely as them, has been watered down to the point where its' very inclusion is now questionable, (an odd decision when you consider the push similar options are benefiting from in the NHL and FIFA games), and the Madden IQ test, so vaunted in 09 that it greeted you before anything else, is now buried under a pile of other options in a menu on the title screen. It's a shame, because the way it helped personalise the game to you individual abilities is worthy of more advertisement, especially for newcomers.

The satisfying Offline Franchise mode also makes a return, virtually identical in terms of content to last year's outing, but with a few tweaks in its presentation. EA have always prided themselves in their efforts towards wrapping a TV quality package around games, and their new Extra Point show should have been the next step in this drive. Hosted by the NFL Network's Fran Charles and Alex Flanagan from one of those virtual studios that are very much à la mode, it's a perfect concept for the game, but one that's half baked in its implementation. While the two anchors do their best to be warm and welcoming, the production values plummet when they're off screen. There's no commentary of any kind accompanying the highlights to your matches, and the remainder of the show is just lists of stats and disjointed voiceovers that covey no insight behind their numbers, apart from emphasising the discrepancy that the figures from computer simulated games don't scale. So if you're only playing five minute quarters, you better forget about your players winning any of the weekly awards.

On the field, things are much better, with Madden 10 achieving a clarity to both its visuals and gameplay that the series has never reached before. From the pomp and ceremony of the national anthem before kick off to the hugs and handshakes at the end of the forth quarter there's a buzz to game time. Graphical flaws are reduced to incidental items such as crowds looking atrocious in close-up, and players without their helmets on appearing to be suffering from gigantism. The beautifully detailed character models and new Pro-Tak branching animation technology allow unmatched levels of authenticity for Madden, consigning the canned movements performed by the mo-cap mannequins of previous incarnations to the past. They've been replaced by a randomness to player-on-player contact that breeds believability. When a running back is contacted by one or more opponents their relative body positions, inertias and physiques all appear to effect whether he continues to drive forward or is cut down where he stands. It makes the weighty, full-bore tussles between offensive and defensive linemen realistic, and, as a by-product, gives a much more faithful representation of the Quarterback position. The pocket is now a more predictable environment for QB's, enabling you to carry out your drops and reads with greater confidence, whilst scrambling outside the security of its confines has become an extremely risky decision. Thankfully, computer controlled defences have also lost the telepathic powers they appeared to have in 09 and now bite on play-action, and even the new fight-for-the-fumble, button-bashing, mini-game manages to recreate some of the frenetic agony of such potentially game-changing moments.

There are still issues with the A.I. on both sides of the ball that will have Vince Lombardi spinning in his grave, with the most conspicuous amongst these the sometimes inexplicable failures at downfield blocking by your team-mates. Their sudden reversions to Neanderthal levels of intelligence mean you can never be sure they'll be successful in even the most simple of assignments, and this can lead to more tears and uncertainty than a summer with Brett Farve's pension broker. In fact, on balance, you'd often prefer if they weren't there at all, as evading solitary tacklers on your own is easier than it's been before. These lapses aren't gamebreakers, however, and the slight, but noticeable, reduction in speed and heavier weight to players, create a genuine humanity to the action, with pads cracking as heavy-set torsos collide at force.

If only the commentary did it all justice, but sadly colour man Chris Collinsworth is underused and not on quite the form he was last year, while the family of play-by-play announcer Tom Hammond will be shocked to hear that he seems to have been kidnapped and replaced by a robot. In these days when MLB games are pushing the envelope with dynamic commentary it's embarrassing for EA that here the stitching is more obvious than that holding the old pig skin together.

EA used to be the masters of all the fluff that went with the actual sporting experience, so finding that they've dropped the ball with this is more surprising than finding Josh McDaniel's garage full of Jay Cutler jerseys. To be fair to them its not like they Plaxico Burressed themselves, and it's tribute to the solid product Madden has become over the years that 10 is held together by its depiction of the nuts and bolts of real football and the Online Franchise mode. If EA can do what they use to do better than anyone, and nail the presentation next time around, they could well have a game that will allow the marking folk to do nothing but eat fancy lunches all year long.

Reviewed by James Hamblin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).