After over 11 years of waiting, gamers finally got their hands on EA Sports College Football 25. For some, simply having a college football video game to play again feels like Christmas. But others can’t help but be overly critical of the game’s flaws at its initial release. Our feelings were somewhere in between.
So, how does CFB25 stack up today? Let’s dive into our College Football 25 game review.
Gameplay feels much tougher than previous versions
At the outset, our initial takeaways are that the latest college football video game is more challenging than what we got used to in the past. While Madden always felt a bit tougher, playing the college version was like a walk in the park. It was easy to juke players nearly out of their cleats or pummel them defensively. This year’s version is a bit different.
Sure, jukes are still very effective, but good luck laying a hit stick on your opponent each and every play. Yet, there aren’t bone-breaking hits on every play in real life either, so this feels fair. Still, learning the right angles, and anticipating when to dive for the tackle may take some time. Dive too early, and you whiff while watching your opponent celebrate their way into the end zone. But if you time it just right, you could see the ball get jarred loose.
There’s also the difficulty factor. As mentioned, gamers haven’t had a fresh college football experience to dive into since 2013. Some may be inclined to start the game on “Freshman” difficulty while learning the buttons, such as a wonky kick meter that requires precise timing on multiple levels. Yet, two minutes into that experience and you find yourself crushing your opponent 50-0.
Go up just one difficulty to “Varsity” level, and the challenge feels much more fair. You can still rack up stats while learning the game, and you won’t be punished each time you make a questionable decision, such as throwing into triple coverage. However, after several hours on the sticks, you may be ready for a bigger challenge; that’s up to you.
Related: 10 athletes we can’t wait to play with in EA Sports College Football 25
Don’t expect to dominate on the road at legendary stadiums
One of the best parts of the game is what EA Sports calls the “Stadium Pulse.” This idea incorporates factors from the toughest college football stadiums to play in, such as Kyle Field, Bryant-Denny Stadium, Michigan Stadium, and much more. Even smaller schools, such as Minnesota, still have a “Stadium Pulse” that makes it much more difficult for away opponents to operate.
Have a road game scheduled at Tiger Stadium? Good luck.
You’ll quickly be thrown into a rowdy atmosphere that features screen-shaking debilitation. This includes not being able to see the routes your players are running, and even their button icons disappear pre-and-post snap.
In other words, you better know your playbook like the back of your hand. There are even times when you try to audible, but it doesn’t take effect because your players can’t hear your commands due to crowd noise. Other times, you’ll try changing a route at the line of scrimmage, but again, your receiver, who’s split outside, can’t hear a thing, so you can’t even change his assignment from a go route to a slant. I found these additional atmospheric factors to be really cool.
Of course, if you start to blow out your opponent, the crowd quiets down, making life much easier for the offense to fire on all cylinders.
Related: Top 10 college football quarterbacks: Jalen Milroe, Carson Beck, and Shedeur Sanders, who’s No. 1?
Ultimate Team is still Ultimate
For those who have stayed away from Madden, biding their time until the latest College Football game release, you may have noticed a brand new game mode called Ultimate Team. This mode is extremely fun, but it’s also addictive.
Before you know it, you’ll find yourself chasing every little challenge and objective in pursuit of building a perfect team. There’s what feels like an endless amount of game options available that make it so you can never ‘beat the game’ or be done with it. You build your team into this machine, and next year, when another game comes out, you start from scratch all over again.
As mentioned, it’s really fun, but it’s also a ridiculous time commitment to try to get the best cards possible. In our mind, it’s never been worth it to spend a dime of actual money purchasing more packs through EA Sports. You can build an elite roster by saving your coins (not spending them on packs) and being patient in buying the individual cards you want.
Plus, playing online leads to facing opponents who take advantage of the game’s flaws, such as blown coverages that they found on YouTube just to get a cheap victory. That part is definitely not fun, but when you do get a matchup with someone who wants to play a fair game, there’s nothing better than squeezing out a close win in the final seconds.
In the end, EA Sports College Football 25 delivered on its promise of making a fun game for fans who want to enjoy playing with their favorite collegiate athletes. Sure, there are flaws, and that’s to be expected upon release. But EA Sports will constantly release patches to update what they can.
For the most part, we’re just happy to have a college football video game to play again, and this time, we don’t even need to rely on the gaming community’s roster builders to give us accurate player representations.