Is it just me, or did EA release College Football 26 really early this year? Last year (and historically with the NCAA Football games of previous generations), the college football game would release in late July, about a month before the college football season starts. This year, however, the game released on 7th of July, over a month and a half from week 0 of the college football season.

Not that the extra 2 weeks or so would have made much of a difference.

I waited a couple weeks and bought the game used (and $20 cheaper!) off of eBay. This was partly because the early release date blind-sided me. I wasn't thinking about football season yet. Heck, I hadn't even activated my fantasy leagues or confirmed that people were going to play again this year, by the time College Football 26 released! I was also cautiously optimistic about this game, but still wanted EA to prove to me that they could actually improve a product before I would give them any more of my money with a retail purchase.

Despite not playing the game until it had already received multiple patches, it still managed to fall far below my cautious expectations, and fully vindicated my decision to not purchase a retail copy.

EA Sports College Football's sophomore year is not something to cheer for.

I am genuinely dumb-founded by EA's lack of effort and care with this year's College Football release. I really did expect that with the highly-anticipated return of its college football game, EA would put at least a year or 2 of solid effort into making a good, polished product, in order to build up some consumer confidence and good will -- you know, before they flush it all down the toilet and go back to being EA.

But they couldn't even be bothered to do that! It's just business as usual for EA. Except now they're selling us two shitty, low-effort football games, instead of just one.

The same, plus some options

First and foremost, so many of the problems from last year's game are still present, so I'll refer you back to that review. Yeah, I did eventually figure out how the option controls work, and get used to them, and even come around to liking them in last year's game. But kicking is still mercilessly difficult without any options to make it easier or less forgiving. This is despite the fact that 26 comes with a smorgasbord of new options for tweaking the ways that things like Wear & Tear and auto-subs work (which does resolve one of my biggest complaints with last year's game). But they couldn't be bothered to give the user any customization options for the kicking game, other than the choice of whether to hold or tap the buttons (the same option we were given last year).

There are extensive customization options for Wear & Tear.

There's still no tutorials or Skill Trainer to teach kicking or other game mechanics. So you're still stuck going to open practice and having to self-teach yourself (through trial-and-error) how to kick, run the option, use the Do-It-Yourself Reverse plays, use the switch stick, and so forth.

I think there's also more flashing indicators to tell me when players are triggering or disabling their abilities, and maybe also when they have Wear & Tear. I'm not quite sure, because there's no in-game keys that tell me what all the U.I. icons on the field mean, nor are there any tutorials or training modes that explain what all the icons and symbols mean.

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.