Today, EA Sports has unveiled its Campus Huddle which provides a deep dive into what to expect with the gameplay inCollege Football 25. A new trailer has been released that features Kirk Herbstreit breaking down these details. This can be watchedhere. The Campus Huddle Gridiron Notes dives deeper into the gameplay aspects of the game as this includes the Campus IQ, Wear and Tear system, the Option Game, new coverages, Abilities and more. The amount of detail that has been put into College Football 25 is almost absurd, as we discussed this on our previews from the recent event.
Fundamentals of Campus IQ
Three fundamental pillars were instilled for the foundation of Campus IQ: All 22+, 134 ways to play, and Stories of Saturday. All 22+ will highlight the skills of individual players and their unique abilities. This will emphasize a wider skill gap between younger, less skilled players and those vowing for a Heisman. Where everyone in the NFL is the best of the best, College Football provides a much wider skill gap across the board and this will be showcased in College Football 25.
The mantra of 134 ways to play emphasizes that everyone has a favorite team and every team is completely different. While the NFL has a handful of schemes on the offensive side, there is much more of a wide variety of schemes in college football. The game features 134 teams, and that is 134 offenses, defense, and different atmospheres to play in. Stories of Saturday emphasizes those atmospheres as part of the presentation. This emotion is felt as freshman will struggle in more hostile environments and the stories of the game will be shown during the play selection screen.
The idea is wide open gameplay for College Football 25. The team studied and tried to recreate the exposiveness of current and former legends of the sport. The result is a game that play all four directions: North, South, East and West. There are new specific run styles for different player archetypes in the game. This allows for the mimic of styles of their favorite athletes (since a majority are in the game) or to create their own approach.
Wear Down Opponents
The new Wear and Tear system is best relatable to what is seen in the WWE 2K series. Different portions of the body will take different hits as not all hits are the same. This new layer of depth and strategy is designed to simulate the real-world effects of fatigue and damage on a player’s performance. This operates on a play-by-play instance and an icon will appear next to the player who is having issues. If a quarterback has thrown the ball 40+ times and taken some hits, don’t expect them to be 100% the next week, either. You will need to take care of players and those with a lesser toughness rating are more prone to being hurt. This means running out of bounds has an advantage as the scale of this hasn’t been seen in any other football game to date.
Some examples of how this works includes a decrease in throwing power and accuracy from a quarterback who’s taking hits and impact to a player’s change of direction and acceleration if there is damage to the legs. Body part degradation varies varies based on that toughness rating and the more damaged a body part is, the higher chance of a severe injury. Players can recover health by taking plays off, during time outs and during halftime. Long term health also comes into play, so those short weeks with Thursday night games will be an issue. The Wear and Tear system can be viewed with a player reticle, in the depth chart, under the Coach Vision and in the Picture and Picture play call menu. There will also be a specific set of animations if a player is getting beat up on the field to help identify.
Pageantry, Tradition, Nostalgia Will Fuel College Football 25
College football video games were a cultural phenomenon in their own right, and the world has been deprived of this for eleven years, until now.
New Way to Pitch
The option is a fundamental play scheme in college football and the team wanted to mirror the proper mechanic for execution of the plays. The team believed the execution of this was actually backwards and that it didn’t properly mirror the quarterback and running back exchange. In the actual game, the quarterback puts the ball into the running back’s gut with the intent of handing off. If the read crashes down, he pulls the ball. This is now done with holding A or X as a pull/keep button. This also simplifies the reads making RPO’s much more usable than in the past. If you don’t touch anything, the QB hands it off. If you want the ball from a read and run for a RPO, you would hit A or X. If you want to throw to the receiver, hit the corresponding button.
There are now different types of pitches to alter the strength. A quick tape will execute a quick pitch while holding the button will result in a strong pitch. Fake pitching is accomplished by double clicking the button. Holding RT/R2 if running past the line of scrimmage with a quarterback will branch into the standard ball carrier movement. New pitch animations have also been added along with pitch catch animations. This includes new animations for pitching out of a tackle. New Read Key animations have been added to the defense to provide more realistic contexts when deciding to crash or stay home. Pitch keys will offer move varied behavior with the option to bluff whether playing the quarterback or the running back. Read and Pitch key can now be defended separately.
This is just a sprinkling of what is coming to College Football 25. you may check out further details on the Campus Huddlehereto dive more into aspects such as the new kick mechanics, passing mechanics, wet weather physics, pass protection, the new Switch Stick and more. College Football 25 is basically a brand new way to play football with a user experience that hasn’t reached this level on any other game to this point. You can check out our preview on the gameplay side of things linked above. College Football 25 releases on July 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series. Players can pre-order the game now with the option of the MVP Edition that will offer both College Football 25 and Madden NFL 25.
EA Sports College Football 25
The first entry in EA’s series since 2013’s NCAA Football 14, EA Sports College Football 25 is a sports sim that focuses on realistically capturing the college football scene.
