As iPhone owners watched another NFL season come and go without a full-fledged football game to help them pass those days between games, some wondered if EA Sports would come to their rescue this season.

Good news football-loving, iPhone-carrying fans: a fully-licensed iPhone football game debuted Thursday. In a development as surprising as a Doug Flutie drop kick, however, EA Sports had nothing to do with the game.

Last week’s news from Gameloft no doubt came as a shocker for those who have not read and analyzed EA Sports ‘ contract with the NFL and NFL Players Association. Turns out EA Sports owns exclusive NFL rights to all gaming platforms except mobile devices. So while Madden NFL owns the Wii, Xbox, PlayStation, PSP and Nintendo DS - it isn’t the only game in town for the iPhone.

Gameloft’s NFL 2010 ($7.99) will be joined by Madden 2010 soon, but for now it has the gridiron to itself. It is a solid offering, packed full of action and superb passing controls, but somewhat lacking in two areas where EA Sports tends to excel: slick graphics and pulsing soundtrack.

The game features four different modes: quick play (where gamers have no choice of teams), pre-season, season and playoffs. A neat touch in season mode is the teams play a schedule identical to the real NFL team’s schedule this year.

Teams are rated based on last year’s results — and the power ratings are noticeable when playing one of the teams that ended up in the cellar last year. All modes feature three different difficulty settings. Selecting ‘easy’ all but guarantees victory.

Leave it to Gameloft to try new approaches when it comes to controls. The company successful brought onscreen joysticks to such iPhone hits as Real Soccer 2009 and Brothers in Arms. Now it has blended the joystick with screen touches - making for a football experience like none encountered before. Then again, it’s the first football video game made for a touch screen.

Are the controls great? No. They do, however, become easier to function after some real-game experience. Passing is rather simple. The receivers run the patterns, with different shapes at the top of the screen indicating the player and colors showing how open they are.

Touch on a square when it’s red and there’s little chance Randy Moss can come down with the ball while surrounded by three defenders. When that diamond moves from red to light green and then dark green, tap it and Wes Welker will haul in a 45-yard bomb with the nearest opponent 15 yards away.

At certain moments in some plays, the action will change to super slow-mo and new control options will pop up on the screen. On offense, the play will shift to the slow speed and a defender - about to make a tackle - will blink. Two icons will show up that give the runner the choice to either attempt to sidestep the defender or to spin around him.

On defense, the same two option icons pop up when defenders are blocked. When the ball is passed and a defender is near because the right defensive play was called, the action will slow and two options will appear. These choices are for the defender to go for an interception or bat the ball down.

Interestingly, the game does not use the iPhone’s accelerometer. While Gameloft employed it in Real Tennis 2009 for aiming serves and in Real Soccer 2009 for throw-ins, tilting action accomplishes nothing with NFL 2010. Could accelerometer options make the game’s controls better? Quite possibly, especially if used for some features not included in the game, such as calling audibles or giving players a quick burst of speed.

Buyers should think of this first version as Gameloft’s pre-season exercise. The company promises an updated version will follow soon with such key sports gaming features as multiplayer mode (Bluetooth and WiFi) as well as YouTube uploads of replays. When Gameloft delivers these improvements, the game’s rating will rise to a grade not lower than a B+.

[Thanks: http://www.bostonherald.com]