It’s here. After 11 years, it’s finally here. EA’s college football video game is back with EA College Football 25 and yes, the hype is real! The game may not be perfect, but it’s a great video game that surpasses anything they have done with Madden in the last 10 years. And this is the perfect football game for the next generation of consoles! So, let’s dive in and talk about EA College Football 25 and why it’s worth playing. Obviously, if you’re a big fan of this franchise and you’ve been missing it for a decade, then you’re anxious to dive right in, but it’s more than nostalgia in the yearning to play a college football video game. This game was due to be released in 2023, but EA took One more year to iron out the bugs and really make a wonderful presentation – to get the feel exactly right when it comes to playing a college football video game. Probably the best thing about this game is the presentation. It plays great and looks fantastic right down to hearing every college’s marching band while you play. And let’s face it if you’re a huge college football fan, the school band creates the ultimate atmosphere. I absolutely love all the details that they put into each school and their home stadium. It’s more than just having cheerleaders and a yell team, you have to have the nuances of each team from the mascots to the sideline entertainment. I started out playing with Notre Dame so the dancing leprechaun on the sideline is a great touch. But as I’m playing Notre Dame’s 2024 season, we start in College Station when they will face off against Texas A&M. Getting to see the Texas A&M collie, Reveille trot up and down the sidelines is awesome! The atmosphere in every stadium immediately makes you feel at home when playing a college football video game and I have to say that it’s a lot more exciting than playing with any team in Madden. I think we can all agree that Madden doesn’t always have the best presentation and it’s not like EA  really updates the presentation from year to year, the last 5 years pretty much feel like the same game. There’s just so much more when you’re playing with college football teams. And for me, like many of my friends who are veterans getting to play with Army or Navy and seeing the cadets fill the stands is an extra level of pride.  It’s another example of the detail and the love that EA put into this game. I know that this franchise will get better from year to year, but this is a good start especially with it being a decade since we last played NCAA Football.

The gameplay is fast. You can’t play this game like you play Madden, you do not get to stand in the pocket very long at quarterback and expected to be able to throw bombs down the field. The strategy is very different, you have to be quick and you have to choose your playbook carefully. The pass rush is more ferocious than what you will find in Madden. All the strategies that I use in Madden are thrown out the window and I have to completely change how I play a football game which makes EA College Football 25 more challenging. That’s one of the things I love about this game. Madden for me gets very boring because I can win any game with about 8 to 10 different plays, I constantly have to change up my playbook and it’s very, very different from each college. The strategies change and there’s a lot to clock management more than we have ever seen in a college football video game. I implore anybody who picks up this game to spend an hour or two going through practice and getting your timing down. Figure out which plays are going to work best for you and develop a strategy so that you won’t immediately get your ass handed to you the first time you play a game and especially the first time you play online. EA did a great job making this game more challenging. Now you can be more precise with the passing or if you’re like me you can go back to classic passing which still offers a lot of thrills in the game but will give you an easier time. For hardcore football players, the new passing meters offer quite a challenge and more than we have ever seen in a football video game. This will change how we play football video games. Needless to say, you won’t get bored with this game and while you may have a blowout, here and there, games will be a lot tighter especially when you’re playing some of the top NCAA teams. And that holds true when you’re playing online. But the gameplay does make for a better experience and honestly, I do not see myself playing Madden this year because I know it won’t compare to how EA has built College Football 25.

Now some old game modes are back from the original game. You can do Dynasty mode and start a career as a coach implementing strategies during a game and going through the recruiting process. If that is your thing then it is a great mode, but if you’re like me and you just want to play the game, you’ll probably never touch the Dynasty Mode. Road to Glory is back and your basic career mode. This is where you are going to be a highly recruited player and start as a freshman where you may not get much playing time, but you will have to learn to be a better football player and be a better student while also navigating NIL deals. It can get a little boring during your freshman year until you finally get into the game, but once you become a starter then the next few years competing for a National Championship makes this an exciting mode. I love what they have done where you do have to keep your grades up, you have to apply skill points to studying and becoming a leader. You have to practice from week to week to keep up your experience points and to build trust with your coach. It’s a story mode and you can’t skip certain things. Like other sports games that have a career mode, especially EA’s soccer franchise, you have to work on your skills, but that can be a lot of fun. My biggest complaint is the viewpoint in “Road to Glory.” Whatever position you choose you are going to be at eye level. You see the field as if you are an actual player. It takes some getting used to. I was very annoyed the first few games that I played and then I got to play a full game as a quarterback for Notre Dame and using a lot of the plays that I like to run and seeing it from actual eye level really made it more challenging. So, there’s a love and hate relationship with it, but I also think it adds to the strength of the “Road to Glory” mode. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the same kind of gameplay as if you’re just playing a regular game. Having an eye-level viewpoint of the feel does make it more fun after you get used to it.

So, this is my biggest complaint about EA College Football 25 and where they really screwed up. The Road to the CFP mode where you will play 10 games and rank up and get into the college playoffs is a great idea, the problem is it’s strictly an online mode so you’re going to be playing against other players. I’m not against having a mode where you play against other players to go to the playoffs.  I’ve had some terrible games where I got beat really bad and some games that were exciting and went down to the final seconds. But if you want to play a season mode where you get into the bracket and fight for the National Championship, there should be a way to do that offline. There should be a season mode that is just like the franchise mode in Madden. A lot of players don’t want to play online unless they’re playing their friends. I agree that we need that online mode, but we need to be able to play Road to the CFP offline. If Call of Duty can have their zombie mode or their multiplayer mode be offline where you have your own private parties or if Madden can have a season mode that doesn’t require you to be online then EA College Football 25 should definitely have it. Right now, if you want to play your favorite school’s season, you pretty much have to do it in the regular Play Now mode and make up your own season with a playoff bracket. Yeah, it’s great that you don’t have to just play expedition games, you can play any bowl game you want between two teams or even the National Championship.  Just like in Madden when you play a regular game you can choose the Super Bowl but EA College Football 25 needs a season mode for every school we’re based on your record you will end up in the college playoffs. There was a season mode in NCAA 14, unfortunately, it didn’t have the college playoffs because that wouldn’t come about until the next year, but you could still take your team to the National Championship through the old BCS system. I remember playing that a lot and I would take Army to the National Championship where I would pretty much have to beat Alabama every time.

Anyway, it just makes me wonder why there isn’t An offline season mode.  Maybe it’s because it’s hard to put together that kind of thing for 134 schools, but there should also be a way to create a custom season where you put all the schools that you’re going to face and have a way where you’re going to go to the college playoffs. The FIFA franchise had a custom tournament mode where you could do something very similar. Maybe we’ll get that next year or maybe there’ll be a huge update that drops when the real college football season starts at the end of August. But right now. it’s fairly lacking. I’ve created my own manual season for Notre Dame and for Army, but it’s not the same as if there was already a built-in season mode. Now the one thing that we all wished EA College Football 25 would have had compared to the old NCAA games is create your own school. There was something magical about being able to create your own college and take them to the top. Whether it’s your own university with the backstory or have a fictitious School from the movies like the Texas State Armadillos in Necessary Roughness or Eastern University like in The Program. EA college football missed a golden opportunity to have this in the game. Maybe it was just something they couldn’t put in since they needed to release the game and it will be back next year or they’ll bring it back during the season through an update. But right now, while I’m playing “Road to Glory” or my own made-up season for Notre Dame, I really wish I could be playing a season with the university I created.  And you better believe I would play one season with the Texas State Armadillos and create a quarterback that looks very similar to Scott Bakula.

Overall, this is an amazing game. EA obviously put a lot of love into it by taking an extra year to really polish a great college football video game. The gameplay is still amazing and the presentation is fantastic. It plays and it looks like college football. If nothing else EA got that right. But sadly, this game doesn’t have everything it could have, and I would certainly expect more with the MVP deluxe edition which I happily bought so I could play this game 3 days early. But truth be told I didn’t need to spend the extra $30 because it still plays like the regular standard version and all the extra stuff I got for $30 isn’t really that big of a deal. I essentially spent $30 to play the game early and yes it was worth it, but I will probably never do that again. One thing is certain, the college football franchise with EA is back and having it on the next-gen consoles is wonderful. After 4 years of having the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X, it’s great to have a fantastic-looking football game on these consoles. But this game could have also been put on the Xbox One in PlayStation 4 and play just fine. EA did build this game on the backbone of  Madden game by using the Frostbite engine so I definitely wish this game were still available on the PS4 in the Xbox One Just like Madden. I always get the Xbox One version of Madden and I’ve never seen any difference between that game and the Xbox series X version, maybe that has to do with the fact that they never make any major improvements to Madden, but I feel like EA College Football 25 could still be played on the last generation consoles. The reason I bring this up is there are still a lot of players that have an upgraded and if you are a gaming company where you’re trying to put on tournaments and have it fully upgraded all of your consoles, would be nice to have this game available on the last generation, but I know that that’s a minor complaint.

It doesn’t take away from how good EA College Football 25 truly is and how exciting it is to have a college football video game again. There are still a lot of improvements that EA can do to this franchise and I’m sure that will happen over the next few years but they’re starting off in the right direction with the look and the feel of the game right down to the mascots and hearing your favorite college band. I’ve loved every moment I’ve played so far, and I know like many gamers I will put a ton of hours into this game and Madden 25 will be largely ignored. What’s the final verdict? Yes, if you’re a fan of college football video games then you must buy this. There’s no debate, get this game and you will not be disappointed.