College Football 25
On Monday, July 8, EA dropped the first extended gameplay for College Football 25, and the publisher may have found something with this reveal style.
I’ll get into what we saw in the gameplay and the overall presentation style for the reveal in a second, but the comment section was even more amazing.
Whenever I watch a video–especially one with more than 1.4 million views in less than 24 hours–I look at the comment section to gauge what people are saying. Because it’s 2024, I’m prepped for a good amount of negativity.
We live in a world where it sometimes feels like the in-thing to do is to hate everything. That’s especially the case when it comes to gaming. Somehow, College Football 25 and this extraordinarily well-received preview have escaped the usual stream of negativity.
In fact, the comments on the video are about as positive as I can remember seeing in a while. Take a look at five that really stood out to me—mind you, I didn’t have to omit the negative ones. This sample is a fair microcosm of the sentiments expressed in the video.
One viewer wrote: “These 9 days feel longer than 11 years fr.” At the time, College Football 25 was set for release in nine days. This user will be happy. As of this writing, the countdown is down to eight. CFB25 officially releases on July 19, but early access is available on July 16 for fans who pre-ordered.
A second viewer wrote: “My grandpa was 83 when he passed last year and he was excited about this. He’s a huge college football fan. Even though he was an Ohio state die hard fan he loved the whole game of football.”
Wow, this is crazy. This game breaches an age gap, unlike any other sports video game I can recall.
A third viewer called out the 5:40 mark of the video, saying, “Peep how the crowd doesn’t react in any way until Donavan [Edwards] broke free, they put their foot into this game bro.” It appears fans appreciate the presentation details the EA team pumped into the game.
As I wrote in a previous post, after getting four full games in with CFB25 in a preview back in May, users should be ashamed of themselves if they button through most of this presentation.
A fourth viewer wrote: “man i gotta stay alive for 8 more days.” Those of us who have anxiously awaited the release of a video game can relate to this statement.
A fifth viewer wrote: “This seems like the first actual next gen big sports game. All the others have been available for last gen but this is only available for next gen and looks completely different.” It’s odd, but I said the same thing to someone else during our preview of the game.
While the video above may have looked impressive, it is even more eye-popping on your monitor. I’m still worried about some issues, but there is no question that CFB 25 will play a beautiful game of American football.
The visuals, gameplay, and presentation will deliver countless wow moments.
Overall, this gameplay reveal was handled excellently. Cover athlete and Michigan Wolverines star Donovan Edwards played content creator Bordeaux in two games. Edwards proved to be good on the sticks and entertaining to watch play.
Bordeaux, whom I’ve met, is a great guy, and his YouTube channel has stellar content. His ability to build a monster channel with an 11-year-old game as the primary content driver is a testament to his thirst for college football and his smart and consistent approach to content creation.
EA’s in-studio experts, a part of the development team (Scott O’Gallagher and Will Sykes), were on hand to add vital insight and good information about gameplay mechanics while we watched the gameplay. There were some apparent edits, but it didn’t come off as a video positioned to hide the game’s flaws.
I’d love to see EA and other companies offer this reveal style for gameplay moving forward.