EA 25 College Football
I loved what I saw of EA College Football 25, but I’m starting to worry that the game will be negatively impacted by the tightrope the developers will be forced to walk to comply with all the rules that come with including NIL athletes.
The attrition system is conceptually brilliant, but is it another area destined to be weakened by the game’s necessary commercial advancement?
Many are aware of and have expressed dissatisfaction with the limitations of player editing. Users hoping to enjoy the same level of player editing freedom as they did with the older NCAA Football titles will be disappointed.
While we haven’t been told what we can edit with players in-game, we do know that users won’t be able to fully edit NIL athletes.
The WAT system sounds great, but reading the Dynasty Mode blog and watching the deep dive video, you never hear Kirk Herbstreit’s word “injury.” The word “injury” is only written once in the 85-page blog, and it’s in this sentence from the Skill Groups section: “As opposed to progressing each attribute individually, for example Trucking, players will progress an entire skill group. A skill group is a collection of related attributes, for example the Racer Power skill group includes Trucking, Strength, Stiff Arm, Toughness, Jumping, and Injury.”
The question arises: can players get injured in Dynasty Mode? We know that players’ attributes will be affected if specific areas of their bodies start to take damage, but can a player be forced to miss one or more matches due to an injury?
I’m starting to think they’ve removed it. The text in the Clothing and Gear section is a bit more problematic. It says:
“As described in the Deep game analysisPlayers can take damage to body parts during gameplay. The more damaged a body part is, the more it will affect their performance on the field. In addition to gameplay on the field, players will also take damage from wear and tear during SuperSim. Each week, players will recover some of their damage from wear and tear. The amount of recovery depends on how damaged the body part is. For example, let’s say in the previous game, your running back severely damaged his right ankle and his left shoulder only took minor damage. The following week, you can expect his shoulder to fully recover and his ankle to only slightly recover. His ankle will be something you’ll want to keep an eye on in the next game.
There is never any mention of the player missing an entire game. A little further down the blog, there is a more ambiguous text. It says:
“In an effort to ensure that players don’t go missing in important games at the end of the season, we’ve set minimums that players will always make up for as the week progresses.”
I’ve taken another deep dive into the game and there’s more information to suggest that players cannot be allowed to miss a game due to injury.
“If a player is seriously injured on a given play, he is expected to sit for a play or two, or maybe longer,” the blog says. “Later in the game, the player is expected to hold on.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking for players who spontaneously explode on the field or tear their ACLs on every play, but injuries and the possibility of missing games are part of every sport.
Having wear and tear on the game but ignoring the possibility of any injury outlasting the current competition is more annoying than immersive.
I hope I’m reading too much into this concept and that injuries work like they do in all the other franchise modes. If that’s not the case and the presence of real college athletes has made it necessary to weaken the injury concept, I hope there are sliders that can be set for each Dynasty mode to provide a more traditional experience.
Fans should still be excited about the return of college football to video games, but the overall product may have some cracks.
College Football 25 launches on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on July 19.