College Football 25 review: "Cancel any summer commitments because Dynasty is going to rule your life"

MVP Baseball 2005, ESPN NFL 2K5, MLB 11 The Show, NCAA Football 13. That list may read like a ragtag assortment of antiquated sports games, but in fact it's a pantheon of greats. All these super sims have one strength in common: the lost art of a comprehensive, all-encompassing managerial experience. You can immediately add College Football 25 to its illustrious ranks, thanks to an unputdownable Dynasty mode that offers variety, longevity, and limitless whoop-and-holler enjoyment.

Seriously, cancel any summer commitments because Dynasty is going to rule your life. It's all down to the potent mix of moreish gameplay, immaculate attention to detail, and off-field recruitment. To kick off each season you analyze a list of high-school hopefuls which can be sorted by potential, interest in your college, pipeline rating, and so on. You add them to your prospects board, then use in-game 'hours points' as the season unfolds to scout, and persuade, and reprioritize who you might win over, and who might go elsewhere. Suddenly real-life 'hours points' to wash, and eat, and sleep seem impossibly hard to come by.

It's a lot of fun. And punch-the-air joyful when you land someone you've spent two evenings trying to haul in through delicate move-making – 10 hours points making an introduction on social media, 40 hours points giving the hard sell on your college's athletic facilities, playing time, and pro potential. All prospects have individual desires and dealbreakers. All prospects can also be lost, crushingly, with one wrong move.

Case in point: my Ole Miss save, where I brought a pair of five-star blue-chippers in to watch a winnable game against Middle Tennessee State – but was so excited to move things along to the next week, I made terrible decisions and lost 25-28. That was all they needed to see. Run-stopping linebacker DeShawn Meryl, my top target, committed to LSU. Slot corner Max Smithson committed to Texas. I committed to unloading every single swear word in my vocabulary.

Perfect pageantry

See, College Football 25 can be punishing in a way that other modern sports just don't dare. This is categorically not just some kid-brother remold of Madden. It feels different, it animates differently, it offers a sense of depth that simply isn't possible in a 32-team NFL game. We're talking about 134 schools, with accurate stadiums, uniforms, mascots, crowd chants and playbooks, all there for you to tussle with season after season in Dynasty. Oh, and players – 11,390 of them, to be precise. Arcade-style X-Factors are gone, their place taken by the more subtle inclusion of Abilities. There are 80 in total, each split into four separate tiers (bronze, silver, gold, platinum), and they add uniqueness to your stars without going OTT.

Creative offenses are what make the college game so special for some, and they're replicated expertly. Delving into those vast playbooks to unleash option plays or deep downfield throws is as satisfying as you'd hope, with every inch of the turf at your disposal. Running wide to escape the trenches feels just as dangerous, and effective, as going south to north. The passing meter is especially intuitive: release in the blue for a perfect throw, yellow for a less certain trajectory, red for a wild dart and potential interception. Good defenses cope well, mediocre ones can be shredded mercilessly. As happens in real life. See? Punishing. But also fearlessly realistic.

Road games are tough – tougher even than the NCAA games of yesteryear. Bring up your play art before a snap and you see wiggly lines where your routes should be. Yep, the old screen shaker is back, but with new wrinkles, like junior players' routes being even more blurry or inaccurate than seniors'. Sometimes they forget routes completely. The new kicking system, meanwhile, can be agonizingly tough in loud stadiums. To initiate a field goal attempt, you stop a horizontal meter moving left and right, then hit the sweet spot on a vertical power bar. On the road, these stopping points move swiftly, even more so with an inexperienced kicker – and you will shank critical three-pointers. Again, zero coddling. College Football is a game for devoted, committed fans, and rightly takes pride in that.

The standout example is CFB 25's staggeringly progressive wear and tear system. Instead of players simply being affected by stamina, every hit they take to a part of their body – head, left arm, right leg – affects performance. The more they're hit, the more they slow down or see their skills diminish, like a QB's power being reduced after blows to his throwing arm. Obviously, there's a heightened risk of injury too. As matches, and seasons, progress – damage can carry over between Dynasty games! – it provides tough decisions. Some fiddly menu navigation is required to fully stay on top of things, but the concept is exceptional, with the potential to transform games across all sports.

The solo path

Less genre-defining but still playable is Road To Glory mode. You sample a college career as a player in one of five positions – QB, WR, RB, MLB, or CB – with five, four, three or two-star potential. These early choices define how hard it is to initially crack the starting line-up. Neat RPG elements pepper the tale, requiring you to commit time to studying and building your brand, all while interacting with team-mates, students, reporters, and putting in hours on the practice field. Not happy with your playing time? Use the new transfer portal to change colleges at season's end. Road To Glory doesn't quite match the life-swamping immersion of Dynasty, but makes for a neat diversion should you need a break from that mode's recruiting/gameday loop. Like you'll ever have time for a break…

College Football 25's most astonishing design choice pertains to Ultimate Team. While that mode dominates most modern EA games, it feels almost understated here. Yes, it's included, with all the card-packing and team-building you're used to from Madden and FIFA. There are collegiate legends such as Joey Bosa and Ray Lewis to bolster your team with, too. But the developer has done such a solid job with gameplay, and Dynasty, that you don't feel like it's the focal point of the package. You're not missing out on anything by missing out on FUT.

One thing you are missing out on, however, is the option to edit players. While this a long-standing feature of the sports genre, previous legal disputes – you know, the kind that killed off NCAA Football the first time around – mean names, attributes and likenesses are locked up tight. There's also no option to export your draft class to Madden like the olden days, and see how your seniors fare on an even grander stage. That's a bit of a blow – but something you'd hope becomes a priority for the sequel. Because there's no doubt that College Football 25 merits a sequel. From nowhere, it's suddenly the sports game that all others have to beat.

College Football 25 was reviewed on PS5, with code provided by the publisher.