A big information release dropped today from various reporters and YouTubers who were able to play College Football 25 for a few hours.
We are going to cover the news that was mostly overlooked regarding gameplay.
Let’s start with the different ways you can customize your offense.
As expected you will be able to create your own custom playbook drawing from the hundreds of unique formations and thousands of plays in the game. Remember how amazing the NCAA Football 14 playbooks were? Expect College Football 25 to be the same way.
You’ll also be able to set custom audibles although it is unclear whether you will be able to set them in default playbooks or whether you will need to use a custom playbook in order to use custom audibles.
The biggest surprises though was the ability to customize hot routes for your receivers. The new hot route system allows you to use custom stems to choose how far down the field you want a route to go.
X-Factors and Abilities
X-Factors will not be in College Football 25. There will be some differentiation that star players get but they don’t work exactly like superstar abilities in Madden.
New Option Mechanics
Read Options are a little different as well. Traditionally if you wanted to hand the ball off to your running back on a read option you’d hold down the “A” button on XBOX or the “X” button on PlayStation. If you wanted to pull the ball and run with your quarterback you’d press nothing.
This mechanic has been reversed in College Football 25. The default on the read option is handing the ball off to your running back. You will tap “A/X” if you want to pull the ball and run with your quarterback.
For traditional speed option plays you now have the ability to vary the velocity of a pitch. You can hold down LB/L1 for a stronger pitch or you can tap LB/L1 for a pitch that takes a little longer to get to your guy.
Passing Game Reworked
When you throw the ball in the new game, a meter will appear over your receiver’s head. If you tap the receiver’s icon it will result in more of a lob pass with some air under it. If you hold it down, it will result in a bullet pass.
However, if you hold down a button too long it can result in inaccurate passes so it may take a little getting used to.
Mid-Play Defensive Adjustment
One of the biggest pet peeves of competitive Madden gamers is getting stuck on a defensive lineman right when your opponent snaps the ball.
When this happened in the past you’d just be stuck not being able to do much on that lay. In College Football 25, however, you can use the right joystick to navigate between defenders mid play.
It’s a small improvement but it goes a long way.
More College Football 25 news should be dropping tomorrow so stay tuned!
