Madden NFL Football, which is slated to be a launch title, is EA's triumphant return to Nintendo handhelds after a two-and-a-half year break. The demo I played only featured an exhibition game with one-minute quarters, giving me a basic overview of the gameplay.

The top screen seems to be tighter on the action most of the time, making the 3D effect more pronounced. The touch screen gives you a more abstract view of the action, with circles representing the players from an overhead view. You also use it to select plays and do other quick interactions, such as audible or call a timeout.

You control the game in a similar fashion to previous Maddens. The Circle Pad controls player movement quite fluidly, and the other buttons control juking, sprinting, and more.

The game makes use of GameFlow, an automatic play-calling system that was introduced in last year's games. While I wasn't able to fully explore it, it's a lot better than it was in Madden NFL 11 on Wii, mainly because the audibles are easier to adjust.

The worst thing about Madden on 3DS is that the action is sometimes too busy, which gave me a killer headache because of the 3D. Still, I really liked how the game felt. Specifically, altering plays at the line of scrimmage was easy to do, especially when you wanted to use the touch screen to redraw a route for a receiver.

The lack of franchise mode is a damper, but the rest of the game seems solid, 3D headache aside.