It would be easy to kick off a review of the latest EA American football game by pointing out, with characteristic British snobbery, that - oh you misguided Americans – this isn’t really football at all. Indeed, many readers will already be wondering what this sort of videogame has to do with them: why would anyone in their right mind trade the free-flowing ballet of Pro Evolution Soccer for the staccato rhythm of Maddens’ stop/start downs and snaps and interminable 10-yard dashes.

But we’re bigger than that. In actual fact, American football videogames, thanks in main to Madden and EA, have been instrumental in opening up the rules and intricacies of the sport to a European audience over the years and now, in this brilliant and polished latest iteration, both new fans and old have their best version of the other beautiful game yet.

If you’re new to the sport it will initially be a little overwhelming. You flip a coin to find out who gets kick off but, from there on in this game is a baffling labyrinth of complex options and menus. But persevere because, when a forward receives a gracefully arced pass with a single outstretched hand and, with a deft flick of the L-stick you’ve dodged past one, two, three defenders and set off on a 60 yard dash to a tumbling, glorious touchdown, everything will make sense.

The basics of play remain the same. When attacking you have four downs to progress 10 yards towards your opponents’ touchline. As soon as you make it past the ten yards you’re back to first down. Continue you that all the way up to their touch line and you can easily score a touchdown. Fumble the ball or fail to make the requisite ground up in the allotted moves and play turns over so you’re defending. At each down you have half a minute or so to decide which formation you want your players to take and, for those unable to decipher the chalk lines depicting the moves of each formation, Madden himself is on hand with a clutch of appropriate recommendations.

Indeed, it’s easy for the newcomer to quickly settle into the rhythm of play and, while the default opposition’s certainly no walk over, by taking the difficulty down a notch you’ll learn how to score and convert kicks with yippie-ky-ay, air-punching aplomb.

There’s a slew of pre-snap controls that will be of use to those who really know what they’re doing and, in online matches, you’ll be able to use these to fool your opposition into thinking you’ll be doing one thing before leaping into action with another.

There’s a franchise (season) mode allowing you to boost players stats as you take a team to victory and a raft of interesting achievements (score a touchdown from an 80 dash!) will keep you concentrating and coming back time and time again. Madden NFL 08 is comfortably the best American Football title currently on the market and for European players looking for something a little different in a sports game this autumn, it represents hours of deep, quality, involved playtime.

4 out of 5