EA Sports College Football 25 Gameplay Deep Dive and Analysis

EA gave us our first extended look at EA Sports College Football 25 and its gameplay yesterday.

Everyone has had a chance to digest those 20 minutes of footage, and we’ve done the same so let’s jump into our analysis below, complete with pictures and GIFs.

Speed Kills

Speed, speed, speed. It was called out immediately by most everyone, and it certainly stands out that the game looks like it’s playing fast, and that’s true to the legacy of the series. NCAA Football generally played faster than Madden. On some level, maybe that doesn’t make sense because the college game is slower than the pro game in real life (as the best players in the world would play the fastest), but whether it’s the placement of the hashes, the style of offenses, or just the devs boosting the speed, it’s noticeable.

Some will be wondering about game speed sliders or a way to turn everyone’s speed down, and fair enough, but I come away from the videos not especially bothered by the speed of the game or wanting them to turn it down. It’s a clear choice that things are going to be wide open, and with that there will be a lot of open-field moments where you need to come up with a tackle or pay the price.

That said, I did really like the breakaway speed on display here:

And at the same time, I liked seeing a user be able to change his angle and catch up to another runner who was out ahead of the field a make a play here:

There’s going to be a wider range of speeds on the field in this game versus Madden due to the larger discrepancy between the ratings of teams and players. Overwhelming speed seems like it will be easier to notice due to these factors. I think that’s great.

What I do want to keep an eye on are things like pursuit angles. It’s hard to say how that will play out right now because a lot of the bad pursuits I noticed in the video were user error. Pursuit angles have certainly been an issue in the past so that would go in the “legacy” bucket in terms of items to keep an eye on for when the game releases.

The Run Game Looks Devastating

Looking past the overall speed of the game, I want to talk about run balance and running overall. The first thing I want to call out for this section deals with the big juke here:

Covering that amount of space at speed is wild, and if it’s really tied to the elite players then fair enough because we’ve seen this sort of juke in Madden before as well. What I am concerned about are the situations where you’re clicked on to a defender and still get “juked” into a bad animation. When people talk about animation-driven gameplay, that’s the sort of stuff I don’t want to see. I know tackling that isn’t animation-driven gets mentioned the most on OS, but it’s the stuff where control is actively taken from me that I worry about the most.

Still, it is a little hard to tell how much was user error versus an animation-driven outcome here because clearly the user runs into his other defender and makes the whole situation much worse.

Another good play that I think could highlight balancing is on display here with a really nice spin into a big hit:

We didn’t see any fumbles in the video, but I do hope more fumbles are generated off this sort of stuff. I’m guessing turnovers will be a big deal (and I’ll talk more about them in a later section), but if you’re going to make jukes and spins this impactful, then defenders need to be able to generate more opportunities for success in the form of turnovers.

Wear and Tear is mentioned at various points, and that will be important as well. Your ratings going down as you take more hits so that should matter and help in this area, but the high-wire act will be figuring out how many turnovers to sprinkle in as well.

One thing I do think will get universal praise is the left-stick maneuvering while running. It’s shown off a bunch of times in the video, but I liked this one the most:

“Ice skating” and foot planting are part of the OS lexicon. Our users have talked more about these things than any humans ever should, but I think what’s here dances around that issue on the whole. Making the left stick about those smaller, quicker movements while the right stick deals with those larger jukes is a good design philosophy to me. It creates more opportunities for creativity, and it introduces a skill gap as you have multiple ways to make a defender miss while at the same time providing more accessibility because you’re not locked in to having to do one specific thing to succeed.

If “ice skating” as a topic comes up, I do think it’s more visible with the right-stick moves just because so much space is being gobbled up by those moves while players are moving at very fast speeds.

Sticky Fingers In The Secondary

Getting back to turnovers, interceptions have been another hot topic in Madden through the years on OS. I’ve always been pro-interceptions in that defenders who get two hands on the ball should pick it. I’m not advocating for “warping” to the ball or anything like that, but since it seems like the “click on” will be stronger in this game in terms of users switching to a defender and making a play on a ball in the air, I expect interceptions to be on the higher end.

Of course, if the sliders work then this only really matters for head-to-head games, but I liked all the picks in these videos. The best one to me was the lineman picking the ball:

It’s always been annoying to me when you need some sort of badge/trait/whatever to pick these off as a defensive lineman. I know this specific type of pick enrages some users, but it’s just a wacky part of football at times. It’s in your hands, you lucked into it, pick it off.

Beyond the interceptions, it was nice to see the devs explain the defensive shells once again. It’s something you’ll need to be smart about, and it will depend on what formation you come out in as well, but there’s room for plenty more strategy on defense during pre-play/playcalling, so adding anything to this area is a positive.

On top of the modification to the “click on” controls, the shells seem like they’ll be the biggest reason we see more interceptions in the game. You’ll need to change it up, and while some of us maybe have to get used to there being no base align anymore, it’s always good to see “real” football making its way into our video games in a way that’s digestible.

I am curious how QB inaccuracy is going to work. The new meter is being defined as something where “bad” throws are not wildly offline and rather still usually in the vicinity of the intended receiver. Receivers have to adjust their bodies but they can make the play.

I know for sure some OS users probably won’t be crazy about that change as many of them really push for more off-target throws, but it’s another one of those balance things. Does this keep interceptions a little more tamped down? Do these inaccurate throws lead to more drops? It’s a bit of a time-will-tell element for now.

On the extreme end of things, if I put a punter at QB would I still have catchable passes that would just float a lot? I’m curious about the mechanic overall.

As a side note, I do really like the trajectories on throws in the video. I can really notice it versus older Madden games. It seems like there is a wider range of trajectories, which in theory should open up more types of passes.

In terms of “real” football, I don’t like Field General. I believe it has been tuned back since it was first revealed (and it’s not always accurate even when it triggers), but I’m just not huge on telling the user this sort of information. However, I admit this may just be a personal preference thing.

Lastly, I just have to show the defensive pass interference:

We didn’t see a lot of penalties, but I’ll take anything for now. It also seems like 50/50 balls are going to be a big deal so it probably will be another year where bigger players in the secondary will be clutch. Regardless, if the penalty sliders work then it’s only a big deal for online play, but I would like to see more penalties even in that environment.

Use Your Weapons

Running backs were clearly the star of the show. From the running attack to catches out of the backfield, they looked very dangerous out there. Now, obviously who was playing probably played into that, but things like Texas routes seemed as dominant as ever against man (good), and I really liked this throw out of the backfield:

It’s a simple throw to the flat, and a badge was highlighted here for why the running back got such a jump off the line, but as I said earlier, I really do like the getaway speed in the open field. Plus, Madden gets stagnant when you know only a couple routes work depending on zone vs. man. The more routes that are dangerous the better, and hopefully things like stems, pass trajectories, and even more hot routes being available all help here. On top of that, it looks like inside zone was still cooking.

One legacy issue I definitely did not like was on this option pitch:

Now, there’s two types of pitches in the game, which is cool, but the defenders have to play their keys. If you watch that clip, you’ll notice one defender clearly has a key for the running back, and he’s on him until the pitch. This is an old issue, but that keyed defender sucks in for a split second as the pitch happens, and that gives up the edge to the running back.

I want the option attack to be fun, but don’t make it fun at the expense of guys randomly giving up on their assignment. It’s one thing if a defender has a low awareness rating and immediately loses his key/contain of the edge, but here it only happened on the pitch itself, which makes it just look like a legacy bug to me.

On the other side of things, it’s good to see light boxes being punished:

Oddly enough, sometimes in Madden the best way to stop the run is not be in a run defense. Playing lots of light bodies and not really being in a traditional run-stopping defense works too often in some Madden titles, so I just need to call this out as a positive. I don’t think we’ll see any D-line twists and offensive/defensive line interactions in general are TBD to me, but common sense stuff like light boxes being destroyed is a good first step.

Presentation Tidbits

That does it for the GIFs, but I still want to hit on a couple more topics, mostly relating to presentation and graphics. We did get a look at the celebrations list:

I don’t have much to say on this except I like that the options are all presented to us. I didn’t like having to choose between a couple in Madden on big plays, so now if it’s up to us to decide (like in FIFA) that’s a good move.

The hurry-up is something else I’ll be interested to see. We got a look at the offense looking to the sidelines for a playcall change:

This had come up in the gameplay deep dive from EA but was still a nice touch. We also got to see the “turbo” hurry-up:

With this, you can’t audible but you can go even faster. They showcased a defender being slightly out of position as one of the downstream effects. Without playing it myself, I don’t have much to say, but I know it’s challenging times as is to make changes on defense so hopefully this doesn’t make offense even easier to run at times.

Lastly, just a couple presentation shots. We get to see the RB ratings, and both guys have plenty of speed.

We have the return of the player of the game (good stuff), even though I’m sure we’d love to see even more presentation around that item.

Snow looked really impressive in the long-distance shots we saw in another EA deep dive, but the snow looked unimpressive to me in the gameplay shots:

I do like that they talked about the weather impacting players on the field — cutting, making throws, etc. being harder in wetter conditions — but the weather effect itself is not as impressive as it first appeared from further away. Maybe it will look better in motion.

And in general the sidelines and crowd look amazing.

The sidelines could be even better, but the graphics continue to pop to me in large part due to the crowds and overall color scheme chosen for the game. We’ll need to see how lighting changes in more environments, but a lot of the other stuff is already really working for me.

There’s more to come this week, so we’ll be back with more EA Sports College Football 25 analysis in the lead up to the July 19 launch.