If you're looking for solid and entertaining gameplay, look elsewhere. A game riddled with bugs and glitches...
When I play a sports game I want to play as me. Most people do. So the first thing I fired up was be an NFL Superstar. Now first you get to make a generic character and add 100 points to various attributes. Now your player starts with a base of 65 for EVERY STAT, regardless of position. Not a Defensive player. Doesn't matter. You'll have 65 for your tackling. Retarded. Furthermore, you can't even take points away from stuff like tackling and add them back into other attributes that actually matter. Idiotic. So you're done with that now. Now I figure that throughout the season my character will get boosts to certain things and I'll get points to add in to certain areas. Nope. But that's not the worse part of this whole POS system. Intermittently after certain games, what will occur is this. You'll have a banner game, 165 yards with 8 catches. Awesome game right. So the game ends and you quit out (after navigating 3 menus, another idiotic thing) and you'll be presented with the loading screen. And that's when you're 360 (or PS3, the issue isn't console specific) will lock up. You can't access the dashboard or anything. It just freezes making you have to go and manually turn it off and turn it back on. But here's the real kicker. It doesn't auto-save after each game, so if you hadn't saved by that point, you're hosed. You'll get to play those games over again and hope you do as well. Enjoy. (There are tons of posts about this on EA's forums, so go ahead and check it out over there if you think I'm just bellyaching.) Oh and when you look at your "Superstar Info" you'll never see an actual picture of them even though you picked out a face and body for them. Why offer to make a character if you're not going to use that stuff for some type of mugshot? That's not just stupid. It's lazy. Oh and if you play as a WR/RB/TE/etc and you get into a little bump and run with a defender, forget about it. You get stuck to them like the had super glue on their hands. You can't break out of it. LAME.
Now while this may seem trifling to some, it's a PITA to me. I want to play one season. Not 3 games 10 times because they've got some crappy code in there that can't handle what it's doing. Now let's move onto the Play Now mode.
If you just want to get in there and play, this is where it's at. It's good. It works. It wont crash. however if you want an updated roster, you'll need to go ahead and go back to the main menu and dig through 3 menus to find it. I had assumed that it automatically updated the rosters since it connects to EA's server every time you start the game. It however doesn't. User friendly, this game is not. Gameplay on this is decent. It's not great, but it's good. You'll be the QB and whoever you throw it or hand it to, you take control of them as soon as they get the ball. You run, that's that. The defense is fairly lame. You can set the controller down after you make the play call and it'll do what it needs to. Overall, this mode seems the most fleshed out, which is amusing since it offers the least as far as immersing the gamer into the experience.
Now let's get into my last two points: Animations and the Menu system.
The animations in this game are TERRIBLE. Run's look like enlongated walks and are RIDICULOUSLY slow. The only time the actually look like runs is when you have a breakaway and the camera goes in on you and blurs out the edges and shakes with your run. Other than that, it all feel painfully slow. Spins rarely work and look dodgy at best. Celebrations are fairly decent, but are lame. Mostly fist pumping (if there's more I haven't seen it). And if you're playing in the Be A Superstar mode, you'll rarely see your team rally around you after you make a touchdown or anything of that sort. You'll see them cheering each other like they made the catch. Not a big deal, but a tad annoying. The tackle animations do look good, but you'll see some bugs where a guy flies right through someone.
Their menu system is HORRIBLE. To get to any mode other than play now, you'll go through 3 menus and a load screen. On top of this, when a game ends, instead of just showing you stats and when you exit out of that (or offering an option to have that at the end of a game) it goes through 3 animation sequences, then you have to hit a button to bring up the menu, which will then allow you to end the game at the bottom. But wait. You have to go to Quit game, then end game, then it'll ask you again if you really want to end it. Of course I do! The games over! WTF else am I gonna do? Watch it again as a replay? That's retarded! Overall, the usability on this game is probably the WORST I've ever seen.
Overall, the game is fun when you're not running into bugs and glitches. If you can get past it, it's a good game. Apparently '09 had a lot of the same issues and EA said they wouldn't fix them because they'd be focusing on '10. Well if that's the case for '10 as well, don't expect me to shell out cash for '11. You may be the only game that has the NFL teams, but I'd rather play NCAA that isn't plagued by these issues than pay for another POS Madden game. Oh and if you can get some of the stuff I mentioned working in NHL '10, then I know you've got someone on another team that can fix this stuff since the NFL '10 team doesn't want to.
Oh and the intro was a letdown. I'm playing a video game. Show me those same moments in 3d, not with a video montage. Again... lazy. My final complaint. GET THE AD'S OFF OF MY DAMN GAME! I paid 60 bucks for the damn game. Either lower the price to 30 or 40 bucks and keep the ad's or get rid of them. Because you put these in there I actually am contemplating switching from gilette to something else, because it's RIDICULOUS that the ad's are in there in the first place! And chompetition. Get the hell outta here. Lame.