Quick Thoughts: Oh That's Right, I Still Need To Buy a PS5
EA smartly got fan interest up without releasing any game footage.
Sometimes life throws little reminders at you to remind you that capitalism can give you moments to look forward to — both good and bad.
For example, I almost crashed my car turning into my apartment complex this morning. It was snowing pretty heavily for all of one hour in the area, and even with my four-wheel drive on, my Bronco Sport still was able to slide a little more than I expected it to when I turned into where I live. There’s a concrete sign out front and I slid so far that I almost hit the dang thing head-on with its corner.
Thankfully, I stopped in time.
Whew.
I was maybe two inches inch away from colliding with the sign, like an idiot would have.
I let such a loud cheer in my car when it fully braked before the faux pas. Glad I didn’t have to wear any stupid damage to my car, but I’m also thankful that an annoying amount of expenses were dodged in the episode as well. I’m not exactly a millionaire and I generally try to save more than I spend. I had just returned from the grocery store and let me tell you something if you haven’t been lately: the cost of cheap salmon isn’t going down anytime soon.
Maybe an hour later, Twitter reminded me that I still need to shell out $500+ for a new video game console.
Not that I didn’t already know that I still don’t have a PS5, but it was always going to be low on my personal list of priorities until the new college football game was set to be released. EA, which politely let the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day come and go before it dropped a gameplay-less teaser to get all of the attention by college football lovers, dynasty builders, and virtual Heisman trophy winners alike.
Some thoughts…
I’ve missed the video game a lot and I’m glad I have, more than anything else, something that’ll help keep me occupied when I have nothing to do/keep me sidetracked when I actually have things I need to do. I trust this game is as authentically built as Matt Brown has reported for his newsletter Extra Points. College Football 2025 won’t be a Madden reskin or even a heavily refreshed version of what the last video game, eleven years ago, was. I’m excited to see what all the work will build-up to. The teaser trailer didn’t have any gameplay footage, but it showed some of the work that EA has put into creating some animations with mascots.
I also missed the game because my NCAA 14 on PS3 kept on freezing up after every game and I haven’t been able to reliably play any dynasty modes since, I’m pretty sure, before the pandemic. First-world problems, I know. But man, having to slowly come to terms with the fact that I had an unreliable game was truly the worst. What happened was that I’d play my game(s), then the game would just freeze-up at the final loading screen before it let me check to see my box score and go back to the main screen to save my information. Even if auto-save was turned on, I could play a complete game and it’d fail to save any of the information because it froze up too soon. After running into this wall about 10-20 times, I ultimately gave up on my copy a long time ago. I think 2018 or 2019 was the last time I really played it. If I re-tried again in 2020, there’s no memory upstairs of me doing so. I know I didn’t succeed in whatever I tried, if anything.
I’d like to vote for Nick Saban to be featured on the game’s cover. Yes, Nick Saban, not a currently-day athlete or recent college graduate. My reasoning is pretty simple, and it goes beyond the “it’s Saban, duh” line of thinking. Everybody buying this game is going to have a lot of things they’ll want to accomplish, but we’re all going to try to beat Saban. We’re all going to take over schools in attempts to build-up the best dynasties we’ve ever seen at any of our schools of choice.
Keeping my fingers crossed for online dynasty mode. Nobody ever promised this to be a feature on the game, and I wouldn’t be completely shocked if EA didn’t provide this as an option. I’d be disappointed as hell if that were the case because I already have a plan on using Kansas State in an online dynasty with one of my friends, but none of this is up to me.
I really want recruiting to be difficult, or at least more challenging than it used to be. I always thought the recruiting part of dynasty building was almost too easy, and it was always weird how a complete nobody of a coach can come into any low-level program and start pulling blue-chip guys over Texas and USC after a couple of good seasons. It’s fun, it’s silly, it’s not that serious, but I always thought the recruiting parts of the game could be better if things were more challenging to pull off.
Same can be said for player development. When it comes to building dynasties, I’m always happy to bring players onto my teams that develop into strong contributors or starters, even if their initial scouting reports suggest that they might not be worth the roster spot. I feel like 90% of players end up having positive progress with their abilities in the game, but that’s also not close to being realistic. Would love to start seeing guys have varying peak performance years and not everybody across the board be their best years as seniors, because that’s simply just not always the case. Randomness can be annoying but I think it should be more accepted here.
The first position I’m going to try to win a Heisman at: I’m considering running back. QB is everybody’s go-to answer here, but running back Heisman campaigns can be so much fun to play out in these games because you just end up playing Bop It with the sticks. Spin it, juke it, juke it, truck stick, stiff arm. I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s something just so satisfying about fighting for 2,000 rushing yards instead of trying to be the nation’s next-best thing at quarterback with 5,000 air yards.
Will there be any EMU dynasty for the newsletter? I’m certainly open to doing a series from the game for this newsletter, but it definitely won’t be my biggest priority. I’d rather wait until the game comes out before I come up with any real plans on building an EMU dynasty for this newsletter’s audience, but I’ll probably end up doing something fun with the game. I’m all ears for ideas from those that are interested, but just know that I have other things I need to improve around here before I spend a ton of time blogging about a video game dynasty (which, again, not against doing).
What’s in the game? Yes, the game is coming (a thing we’ve known, but they’ve been very hush-hush about), but outside of that we’re all pretty much just left with our imagination to lead us. Matt Brown mentioned in a previous post of his that EA’s done a really poor job of simply communicating with the public about what’s going on with the game. No, not everybody needs to know when the release date will be, but I think real fans of the game deserve some sort of transparency with the company. If EA said nothing about the features and options that the game will have but instead published four YouTube videos of everybody working behind the scenes for me to see how crafty and hard-working everybody’s being, we’d all have the chance to see what it at least takes to create a new video game engine from basically scratch as I understand it. The public, as much as nobody really says it in these terms, wants a chance to build some respect for EA. This game is a tremendous project that many of us have been waiting over a decade for, and people like me want something more to see before we head over to Best Buy spend the $500 for a PS5.
