Football didn’t get its hooks into me until well into adulthood, which was too bad because I went to college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, home of the once-dominant Nebraska Cornhuskers football team. Most of the time I’ve been watching, the Huskers have been middling with a carousel of coaches and missed expectations.
I never got to experience the championship years, let alone the years where we were anywhere but on the outside looking in on the top 25 rankings.
College Football 25 just came out, making it the first big-budget college football game in more than a decade. It combines smooth gameplay, great presentation and all the teams you need to live out your loftiest gridiron dreams on the road to the College Football Playoff.
From the drumline-heavy pep music to the custom introductions, stadiums and mascots that reflect the real-deal thing, the presentation here is just through the roof. As a photographer for my college paper, I got to attend plenty of big gamedays, and even though I didn’t quite appreciate what was going on on the field, there’s something undeniably electric about 80,000-plus people packing into a stadium on game day.
The player animations in everything from on-field moves to celebrations — which, yes, there’s a big system for doing different celebrations — are also some of the best I’ve seen in any video game.
The gameplay also shines with a load of settings to customize the difficulty and control schemes to best fit the experience you’re looking for. It makes it easy for both veterans of football games — of which I am certainly not — to get deep into the systems while also letting the beginners have a fun time.
Want to face gritty, ball-hawking defensive backs who will pick off every misguided pass? Want to be challenged to read defenses and make adjustments? Then, there are settings for you. Want to run up the score and make an out-of-nowhere run from the ranks of the unranked to the CFP? How does throwing for 700 yards and ten touchdowns in a single game sound? You bet there’s a setting for that.
How else am I ever going to see Nebraska bowl over a #1-ranked Ohio State in a 63-9 rout?
While the game has plenty of highs, unfortunately, it also lacks a lot. Overall, it seems like the game was made with diehards of the old NCAA Football franchise — the last release was in 2013 — in mind, so there’s not a very good tutorial system. While the on-field gameplay can be grasped with some trial and error, the lack of a good tutorial system can make it really difficult to break into the more complex systems, such as recruiting players or monitoring their wear and tear.
Even figuring out which mode is right for you isn’t entirely clear. There’s online multiplayer, a mode where you can play through the career of a single athlete by balancing your practice time, skills and coach trust, a single-game exhibition mode and a dynasty mode.
I think most people will be looking for Dynasty mode. In it, you’ll take on the role of coach and manage the team through the season. Like with the rest of the game, you can make it as complicated as you’d like or let the game automate just about everything so you can focus on calling plays and breaking off big runs.
While getting really deep into College Football 25 may require a lot of time spent outside the game watching tutorials on YouTube, luckily, there’s plenty that’s accessible enough to see your favorite team win. And at the end of the day, what’s better than that?
Matt Buxton is a freelance writer and gamer. He can be reached at matt.a.buxton@gmail.com.
