Ivan Tibbs

If I’m an employee at EA SPORTS, I’m embarrassed to say I’m a part of this tragedy. We waited 11 years to play this game, and EA gave us backyard football instead. Once you get past the noise of the crowd, the camera angles panning over the stadium and what not and all the things you see on tv (which is the only thing this game gets right), you learn quickly that there is no rhyme or reason to playing this game. Strategy goes out the window, as EA only wanted to focus on how to make sure we never stop hearing the crowd noise. So, it’s just a compilation of big, unrealistic plays and play calls that even the most causal football fan will shake their head in disbelief. The AI on the users team is useless. The game consists of lazy play on both sides of the ball. On one side we see the offensive line completely ignoring the defender right in front of them, or just standing in one place not acknowledging any of the action on the field. On the defensive side, if you don’t switch to control every single player, forget about anything other than waiting to receive the next kickoff. The AI doesn’t do anything on defense but just show us how accurately EA got the player models to represent real life. Other than that, they don’t do anything on defense but allow your opponent to get unrealistic chunk play after unrealistic chunk play. Goal line offense is pointless due to horrendous offensive line play. And so is the user calling a long pass play, as the CPU is almost always in your huddle to go along with the JV O-Line. But if you audible or call a hot route from a short pass play and send a receiver long…MONEY! See how this doesn’t make sense? And that’s my bottom line for CFB25. Nothing about it makes sense from a gameplay perspective. All we got this year was a 7 on 7 game. This not only showed us that EA has no idea what football actually looks like, but it also showed us that EA SPORTS does not give a damn about making a quality game. Because they know we want football, and we want video games. So for yet another few months, EA sits back laughing at us until it’s time for them to trick us again into thinking we’re actually getting simulation football, when we’re just getting an Arena Football, G-rated NFL blitz mashup.