Controversy
Last week, EA Sports released its third installment of the revived “College Football” gaming series, and there was instant drama. Gamers soon realized that microtransactions made their way into the “Dynasty” and “Road to Glory” modes. To make matters worse, the sliders of XP progression to level up faster were taken out. This wouldn’t be a big deal if the “normal” progression wasn’t much slower than the previous set of games before 2014. EA purposely removed the sliders and added microtransactions in hopes that gamers would get frustrated with the slow progression. These were predatory sales in offline modes that were considered untouchable. Leading to the movement of #CFBPlayDontPay took off like wildfire on social media. To EA’s credit, they corrected this by taking out the microtransaction in offline game modes, and reports say the sliders will be added sometime this week.
Likes
The rest of the game is okay. The “practice plan” section and NIL add an extra layer to coaching your program. The fun Mascot Mashup is back, but there is a twist (we’ll talk about that later). There are also some cool marching band covers for the soundtrack. I also like the touch of action stills of the players they are talking about during halftime and between quarters. It does add to the presentation.
Issues
But where some features improved, others regressed. The crowd noise sometimes drowns out the broadcast. The AI on your team is braindead. They run past ball carriers, don’t put their hands up to break up the pass, or perform other tasks that they should clearly be able to do. I get that awareness can be low, but it’s mind-boggling. I also feel like some of the animations, like running and dropping passes, don’t look as sharp. Lastly, the computer is never called for intentional grounding. It’s been a problem through all 3 editions and still hasn’t been patched.
This is going to be a biased nitpick, and I’ve only played with a few schools, but it feels like the crowd chants sounded better in the last game. I noticed the “We Are” chant at Penn State doesn’t sound quite as well, and they took it out of “Zombie Nation” completely. I find it strange that they are taking things out of the environment. That’s what people love about these games. I also think EA is trying too hard to be 2k with the load screens featuring a flag of the game mode. To me, it looks cheap.
Score
I put more than 200 hours into this game yearly since 2002, so I understand that my opinion is different. I like that they added NIL in dynasty, but I feel the aesthetic took a step back from last year’s. There is also comically bad AI, some animations look worse, and bugs in the presentation that you can’t help but feel this could’ve been better. It’s fine, I’ll play it, but it’s not as good as last year’s.
3/5 Stars
