Madden NFL 25 - title

We finally have another big-budget football game to compare Madden to! Yeah, sure, it's another EA Sports game, so it's not much of a contrast. We still haven't gotten a proper new game from 2k, so we still don't get to compare Madden against another studio's vision. In fact, the closest thing that we have to a direct competitor to Madden is probably still NFL Pro Era (which released its first sequel earlier this year, but I haven't played it due to on-going elbow pain). Pro Era is, however, a VR game, and more of a middle-budget "Double-A" game, and so it also is not directly comparable to Madden.

So how does Madden look when compared against the only other football game at its level? Well, not very good -- which shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. I'm not exactly loving College Football 25. In fact, I've been a pretty outspoken critic of its since its release. I didn't have a honeymoon period with it the way that so many other reviewers and critics did, and I was noticing and reporting flaws and limitations from day 1. Unsurprisingly, my biggest complaints about both game are the things that they don't do, but which the other does.

There are multiple commentary teams.

To copy-paste, or not to copy-paste?

There are some features from College Football 25 that did find their way into Madden. Just like the college game, Madden now has multiple broadcast commentary teams. In fact, Madden got 50% more broadcast teams, as it has 3 different commentary teams, instead of CFB's 2. They are of mixed quality. Mike Tirico's line delivery might be the worst of the bunch, and it's often stilted and disjoint. Kate Scott, on the other hand brings a lot of energy -- maybe too much energy! She is a welcome change from the normally sterile and lifeless Madden commentary. Greg Olsen is probably the highlight of the bunch.

In real life, Brandon Gaudin and Charles Davis commonly calls day games on CBS (usually AFC matchups). Greg Olsen usually does day games on Fox (usually NFC matchups), while Brock Huard is an analyst for Fox. Mike Terico usually does Sunday Night football on NBC. Kate Scott is the regular announcer for the Philadelphia 76ers baseball team, and has called some preseason NFL games. Which of these teams calls any given game in Madden's Franchise Mode is completely random, and the user can't even choose which teams gives the commentary for any given Franchise game. It isn't based on the day of the week, or on the time of day, or on which teams are playing. If you want a specific team to only call Monday night games, for example, you would have to start the match, then quit and restart until you get the commentary team who you want.

Even if it is random, the extra variety is welcome.

The half-slides from College Football 25 have been imported into Madden.

Madden also ported over the revised slide protection mechanics that allow for a half-slide, which is a welcome addition to the game. But for some reason, they didn't port the overlay that shows which blocker is going to block which defender. So I can't be certain if the play is going to be blocked the way that I want it to be, or if flipping the play will improve the blocking, or if motioning a tight end or fullback to a different position might create a better matchup or leverage advantage.

Madden also imported the new kicking meter and Read Option controls that were introduced in CFB 25. I'm already familiar with both these concepts from CFB, so I'm not having nearly as much trouble adapting to them in Madden. Unlike CFB 25, Madden does have the option to revert the kicking meter back to the classic meter from previous Madden games. No such luck with the Read Option controls though.

I often do skill trainer drills when I boot up a new Madden game for the first time, just to see if any of the new mechanics have changed the way that the game feels, or if there are any new mechanics that need tutorializing. I was pleased to see that, unlike College Football 25, Madden still has a Skill Trainer, and it's still being updated with new drills and content. For example, I don't recall the "Pocket Pressence" drill in Skill Trainer mode in previous years.

The tutorial for the new kicking meter is just a single text overlay, and the rest of the tutorial is just flat-out wrong.

I was less pleased to see that the Skill Trainer is still poorly-maintained and half-assed. The new "revamped" passing mode is not tutorialized anywhere, nor is the new kickoff rules and mechanics. The "updated" tutorial for the new kicking meter is literally just an extra text overlay inserted before the text from previous years' field goal and punt tutorials. The field goal kicking tutorial still claims that the kick meter will show the full arc and landing spot of the ball, and that the trajectory will sway with the wind -- none of which is still true. There's also no explanation of how the accuracy meter works, or of the overcharge penalty. So once again, EA is showing little-to-no consideration for tutorializing its new mechanics.

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EA Sports College Football 25 - title

I felt like College Football 25 would be a real make-or-break title for EA Sports. Madden has been getting criticized for its focus on Ultimate Team, lack of attention to Franchise Mode, and myriad legacy issues that EA just refuse to address. The market has been jonesing for a licensed college football game -- in fact, it's been jonesing for any alternative to Madden. This is EA's chance to really put out a quality product that can earn it a lot of good faith to help carry it through the coming years of renewed football video game competition. I honestly expected that College Football 25 would hit a home run with its Dynasty Mode and feature set in order to earn back that trust and good faith -- especially after it was delayed a whole year from its original expected release.

Instead, I keep feeling disappointed and frustrated with College Football 25 at almost every turn. It feels, to me, like a pale shadow of its NCAA Football forebears. It's a mess of missing features, confounding control and interface issues, bad A.I. (especially on defense), and rosters that are muddled and obfuscated by the legal tightrope of name-and-likeness rights. It checks off almost all of the "must have" feature boxes (like adding the playoff and transfer portal), but this game seems to aggressively refuse to go above and beyond in any capacity.

Strap in and get comfortable. This is going to be a long review...

No-huddle gameplan

The launch version of College Football 25 is really friggin' hard! I started 0 for 7 against the CPU (on the All-American difficulty, with default sliders). I had to play a Boise State home match against lowly cupcake New Mexico in order to get my first victory. Since then, I've been doing a lot better, but victories do not typically come easily.

I have my share of responsibility in this. I don't know the playbooks yet, and I threw some facepalm-inducing interceptions. Linebackers seem to play a lot deeper in College Football 25 compared to Madden, and my QBs weren't putting enough touch on passes over the middle of the field. So Post and Dig routes that would be wide open in Madden were repeatedly being picked by lurking linebackers.

Lurking linebackers make a lot of interceptions between the hashes.

Despite my own mistakes, the designers of the game seem to have gone out of their way to make sure that the barrier to entry would be as high as it could possibly be. The game doesn't seem to want to teach its new features, mechanics, or controls, and it insists on changing things just for the sake of change -- screw my decade (or longer) of muscle memory! Many problems that have long frustrated me in Madden reared their ugly heads to conspire against me as well. I often felt like I could call out exactly how an upcoming play would unfold before the snap, because I've seen all of this so many times in Madden.

Sacks and interceptions tended to come in pairs or triplets.

My star receivers refused to catch open downfield passes, while the CPU receivers all had hands of glue.

Force defenders refused to do their job, and my defense in general refused to contain the edge or take viable pursuit angles. Even if I expected an outside run and spread my line or linebackers, they'd still all crash inside and get smothered by down-blocks.

CPU receivers would repeatedly beat my DBs on in-breaking routes and break free for huge gains or scores, even though I explicitly set inside shade before the snap.

Outside shade was basically an invitation for the CPU to score on a post or quick slant, even if I had a single-high safety or robber to supposedly stop those specific routes.

My blockers would absolutely refuse to block the single most important assignment on the play whenever I needed a run play to be successful, even with elite running teams (such as Michigan).

My own big plays would consistently be called back by penalties.

The CPU teams would go into un-beatable "turbo mode" as soon as the 2-minute warning hit.

And so on, and so on. You've heard or read all of this before if you've looked at any review of Madden in the past decade or so.

CPU-controlled defenders take horrible containment and pursuit angles.

There was even a patch, released a couple days before this review was published, which was supposed to have improved pursuit angles. But in my limited play since the patch, it seems to have actually made pursuit even worse, somehow! Not only do players continue to take horrible containment angles, but any defender that happens to be in the open field on the perimeter, and in a position to stop an outside run, now has an infuriating habit of just bouncing off the ball-carrier. So perimeter tackles that were being made a week ago, are now being missed after the patch, giving up even more big runs and scores to the outside.

I cannot understate how much these poor pursuit and containment angles are ruining my enjoyment of this game! So many of my losses can be directly traced to my defense just completely shitting the bed and giving up big run after big run because they are completely unwilling to defend the perimeter. And there is little-to-nothing that I can do about this, because I can only control a single player on the defense at a time.

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EA Sports College Football 25 - title

UPDATE 28 August 2024: I was wrong about how the Option controls work.

It turns out that I was mis-understanding how the Option controls work in this game. It's actually not nearly as bad as this blog (and its accompanying video) make it out to be. I will be posting a new blog and video in the coming days to address my mistake and explain how the Option actually works, and also the logic behind why I think EA made this change. I apologize for the misunderstanding.

In my previous post about EA Sports College Football 25, I mentioned that there are 4 big challenges that I'm having, which have caused me to loose the vast majority of matches that I've played against the CPU, on the All-American difficulty, with no adjustments to any gameplay or A.I. sliders. 1 of those problems is my fault, which is that I need to get better at reading the defenses and not turning the ball over as much. I'm still working on it... The second issue is that CPU-controlled defenders do not properly play outside containment and take horrible pursuit routes that give up big plays and scores. That's not on me, since I can't personally control all 11 players on the defense, and am dependent on them doing their assigned jobs. The third problem that I've been having is the same problem that everyone else is having, and was the primary topic of the previous post, which is that the kicking meter is too damn hard.

The 4th major issue that I'm having with College Football 25 is the changes to the Option mechanics and controls. Option controls have been changed, such that the user now has to hold the X button (on PlayStation) in order for the QB to keep the ball, or release the button in order to hand off to the fullback or halfback. More importantly, however, is that the timing rules for the option hand-off no longer lines up with the animations, making it difficult or impossible for the user to execute these plays as they are designed.

The tutorial pop-up appears once, and then will never be seen again.
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EA Sports College Football 25 - title

As many of you already know, EA Sports College Football 25 is considerably more challenging to play than your average Madden. I have been struggling a lot. At the time of this writing, my record against the CPU currently stands at an abysmal 2 wins to 10 losses, after starting 0 for 7. All of these matches have been played at the All-American difficulty without any modifications to the sliders. They've all been close losses. I'm not getting blown out by any stretch of the imagination. But these struggles are really starting to sour me on the game as a whole. I have personally found that most of my struggles have been the result of 4 factors, 3 of which should not be causing as many struggles as they are causing, and I am starting to chalk those up to poor design, rather than my own lack of skill.

This post is also available in video format on YouTube.

The first factor is my own mistakes, to which I take full responsibility. And I'll admit, I am making a lot of mistakes. Specifically, I have been interception prone. Most of these interceptions are being caught by lurking linebackers in the middle of the field. These linebackers seem to play their zone coverages considerably deeper than in Madden, and so routes in the middle of the field that are usually open in Madden are being intercepted in College Football 25. The linebackers are not super-jumping or making one-handed catches or anything like that. They're just playing their zones differently than in Madden, and I haven't adjusted to it yet. Pass trajectories could maybe have more arc and touch on them, but maybe that's just me not using the pass charging mechanic correctly. Though EA's games have a long-standing track record of low pass trajectories.

The 2nd problem is that my CPU-defenders are not playing contain very well, and are routinely taking poor pursuit angles and giving up big plays. This is something that EA and Tiburon definitely need to address, as defensive force players and safeties should do a better job of keeping the play in front of them.

I have been losing a lot of close matches against the All-American CPU.

But this isn't the issue that I want to talk about today. The issue that I want to discuss is the 3rd reason why I am losing matches of College Football 25, and if you have been keeping up with the early reviews and impressions of the game on the internet ... or you read the title of this post ... then you probably already know what I'm going to talk about. The single biggest reason why I am losing all my matches of College Football 25 is because of the new kick meter. And this kick meter is coming dangerously close to making me hate this game.

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Over the years, I have frequently recommended that people stop buying new games from AAA publishers at retail. Don't buy them at all, or if you do, wait for a sale, or buy it used. This is because the massive, international, conglomerate corporations that publish these games are sleazy, scummy, or outright evil.

They underpay their employees.

They abuse their employees with cultures of crunch.

They hang the Sword of Damacles over their employees heads with the perpetual threat of layoffs.

They report record profits to their shareholders and award billion dollar bonuses to executives on a Tuesday, and then lay off hundreds or thousands of workers on Wednesday because they "can't afford" to keep them.

Some publishers even have active cultures of sexual harassment and abuse of female employees, which their HR departments are happy to cover up or sweep under the rug.

They harass and ostracize transgender employees and hold their healthcare hostage.

They fight against unionization.

They overcharge for their products.

They sell un-regulated gambling to minors.

They sell half-baked or broken products at full price.

They cancel promising upcoming products with little-to-no rhyme or reason.

They want to take away the consumer's right to own the media that we buy.

The list goes on...

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A gamer's thoughts

Welcome to Mega Bears Fan's blog, and thanks for visiting! This blog is mostly dedicated to game reviews, strategies, and analysis of my favorite games. I also talk about my other interests, like football, science and technology, movies, and so on. Feel free to read more about the blog.

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