Pick 'em up, touch 'em down

There's no end zone in sight when it comes to high quality American football games on PlayStation. So here's some sensational Super Bowl styled software to get your blood pumping and fingers twitching.

As Super Bowl XLII serves up another slam-jam feast of National Football League flavour with the New York Giants and New England Patriots battling it out for ultimate supremacy, all eyes turn to one of America's biggest and hardest hitting sports. Thankfully there are plenty of opportunities on PlayStation to let you indulge in the pumped-up and padded glory of American football without the risk of being slammed by hundreds of pounds of human mean machine in the process.

One of the most popular names in NFL, the Madden series has long become a permanent fixture in games - a position cemented by the excellent Madden NFL 08 on PlayStation 3, PSP and PlayStation 2. Madden NFL 08 offers an accessible yet comprehensive set-up that allows newcomers to ease their way in with a batch of mini-games, practice and tutorial modes, while letting the more experienced aficionados enter the fray with little delay.

Regardless of your experience the new Read and React system benefits both new and old, providing clear symbols to signify a specific role, strength and skill of certain players - creating an intuitive facet of Madden that anyone can utilise quickly and easily mid-game. Making sure you don't over rely on this excellent feature is the awareness that all these abilities are susceptible to a counter skill, meaning astute use of each team member is necessary to make the best of them.

On top of that, playbooks are now extended for greater strategy breadth, and numerous challenges have been added along with various co-operative and competitive multiplayer modes. There is even the ability to transfer team files between PSP and PS2 versions, meaning you can constantly improve your burly men on the move. Polished and diverse, Madden NFL 08 raises a very high goal bar for its rivals to compete with.

If you crave something a little less rules and simulation driven, there's the slightly more action centric, grass roots oriented NFL Street 3 on PSP and PS2. Electronic Arts' popular Street range has always replaced the bright lights of stadiums with the more humble likes of backyards and parking lots. But this doesn't mean there's an absence of flash and flare. Scoring is all about showing off in the most extravagant way possible.

True to the series, NFL Street 3's showboating moves have increased to the point where you can not only perform humiliating gestures such as high stepping in the end zone and no-look passes but also super jumping off objects to leap over opponents like a robotically legged Michael Jordan. All of this contributes to the Gamebreaker meter, which eventually fills up and permits the use of a devastating defensive or offensive move to really rub things in.

Not to be outdone by its teammates, the forthcoming NFL Tour should offer a little something extra for American football fans when it touches down on PlayStation 3 in February 2008. A reworked continuation of the NFL Street series, NFL Tour reaches out with an exuberant festival feel to blitz you with seven-on-seven football. Taking you on an American road tour, the aim is to earn a contract on an NFL roster by tackling the roughest and toughest players from the sport's elite in newly designed stadiums.

Like Street, Tour's arcade angle gives a dose of instant gratification style gameplay for pick-up and play immediacy without the need to learn all the rules of the game. The focus is on fast exciting action, complete with eye-popping tackles and turbo boosted runs - no padding, no time outs and 90 second halves to maximise the intensity of it all without sacrificing the glitz and glamour that the big stadium atmosphere can provide. 

With less high flying manoeuvres than NFL Street 3 but more flamboyantly paced than Madden NFL 08, the slick NFL Tour is the perfect middle ground for anyone undecided between the two, acting as an ideal bridging game in a range of diverse NFL titles that will keep you going around Super Bowl XLII and beyond.