Madden NFL 07 brings 3-D football action to the DS. I played an exhibition game between Pittsburgh and Seattle (which seems to be the theme for all Madden games in the Nintendo booth) and had a chance to see what they've done with this year's version.

The graphics engine is pretty good. Even with this early version there was no clipping and all players moved smoothly. Of course it's the DS so it's pixelated, but things ran pretty well. During a game, X's and O's representing where your characters are on the field are shown on the top screen while gameplay takes place on the bottom screen. When you're picking plays, the plays appear on the touchscreen while the top screen displays a token view of the field and the players on it. It isn't too hard to figure out.

Touchscreen functions are activated by tapping icons that appear in the bottom corners of the screen. The primary use of the touch screen is to call audibles (both offensive and defensive) by touching an "A" icon. When this is done, four plays appear on the touch screen and you choose one of them to switch to. The touch screen is also used to design new receiving routes on the fly (by tapping the "H.R" - Hot Routes - icon on offense) and change the defensive positions of your players (by tapping "D.P" - Defensive Position, I assume - icon on defense). The Hot Routes functionality takes you to a separate editor screen, where it looked like you could draw a path for you receiver to take. Every time I tried to use these, I ran out of time and had Delay of Game called on me. Therefore, I can't actually say how "cool" these features are or how well they work.

Madden's third dual-screen edition hopes to improve on last year's lackluster effort. At this point it hard to say whether or not it's an improvement, but it doesn't seem like a step backwards.