EA Sports finally made its grand return to college football last year after a decade off due to player likeness issues. Thankfully, the team delivered a solid foundation, and fans flocked to the game in record numbers. College Football 25 set sales records, proving the audience was starved for college football content. With College Football 26, the team has the opportunity to build on that foundation, giving players an even better on and off-field experience. At a recent event, I was able to get my hands on the sticks and see the changes College Football 26 is promising to the on-field product. I’m happy to report that the early build seems to be taking things in a good direction.
The first thing you’re going to notice in CFB 26 is the presentation upgrades. EA Sports has been using the slogan “Every team is someone’s favorite team” since last year, and that continues to be the goal. Major programs like Alabama and Ohio State have been given as much care as Delaware University.
College Football 26 has added tons of new songs, runouts, and off-field interactions. The biggest addition is Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” which plays before games at Virginia Tech, but that’s far from the only new piece of pagentry you’ll notice. As an Oklahoma State alumni, EA nailed the team’s runout from behind the cattle door, though it would be a lot cooler if they licensed Kurt Russell yelling, “You tell ’em hell’s coming with me,” from the 1993 hit film Tombstone.
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That said, the presentation was great last year. Getting more of that is great (and you will notice that the crowd and cheerleaders generally look better), but it’s not gameplay. Playing for a couple of hours isn’t long enough to uncover many of the warts, but I was impressed by a few key additions that should please fans.
I’m going to lose a lot of people by leading with this, but I’m happy to say that EA has finally added stunts and twists to the defensive line. This lets you throw in a few new wrinkles into your attack on that side of the ball, mixing things up to keep your opponent on their toes.
CFB 26 also introduces a new block steering mechanic. Again, it’s hard to tell how powerful the feature is in a limited time, but it lets you influence which direction you’re being blocked. This can put you in a position to make an arm tackle or steer the runner into a gap you know is covered by your back seven.
On top of all that, you now have the ability to set custom zones at the line of scrimmage. I didn’t get to play around with this too much, but it looks like it’s going to give you a ton of control over where your defense sits in coverage, meaning you’re a little less likely to get burned if you play correctly. You’ll finally be able to counter custom route stems much more successfully.
Offensively, I didn’t notice a ton of changes. At least when I was playing. EA talked about improvements they made to QB AI on the CPU side of things. I tried to play a few guys of varying skill level and height to see if I could notice any changes with throwing windows or route progression. I’m happy to say that the differences were noticeable, but keep in mind that I only played a few games. I’ll need a much larger sample size to know for sure.
However, the biggest change to gameplay (at least for me) is the addition of dynamic subs. You don’t have to go into the pause menu to change out players. Now, you click a button and swap guys in and out while you’re at the line of scrimmage. If you’ve played NBA 2K, it works similarly here, though it is slower because you’re dealing with 11 positions instead of five.
Either way, this cuts down on your time in menus and lets you make quick adjustments on the fly. Do you need a big gain through the air, but your starting wideout lacks top-end speed? Swap in your speedster for a play. Is the game on the line, and you need your starters back in a hurry? They’re there with a simple button press. It might not sound game-changing, but trust me that this small improvement makes a huge impact.
That sums up my early thoughts on EA Sports College Football 26. There’s nothing ground-breaking here from last year. It’s all about quality of life and community-suggested changes. EA said more than once that they want people to know they’re listening, and, for the most part, CFB 26‘s gameplay shows exactly that.
EA Sports College Football 26 is set to release on July 10th and will come to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
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