A New Patch Creates That Urge to Start Fresh

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For anyone who missed it, a new patch hit College Football 25 yesterday. It fixed some annoying issues within dynasty mode like Power OL never getting Pass Block Finesse upgrades. In addition, you now have the ability to more easily cycle through guys on your recruiting board.

But, to me, the big addition was the 700+ new players that were added and the various ratings adjustments implemented. If you’re someone who is very into jersey numbers, tons of those were corrected as well. These changes while small in the grand scheme of things have got me scratching. The updates have given me that itch, that itch to restart my dynasty playthrough.

I’m in one online dynasty that obviously will not be restarted, but in my own realm I have a New Mexico dynasty that is currently in Year 4 that I’m starting to question after today’s update. This is not a new phenomenon for me. I struggle with this in certain sports games more than others, but really quality roster updates are my kryptonite. I guess I’m one of those people who just really likes to mimic what I’m currently seeing on TV each day/week when I watch my favorite teams, but it obviously hampers my ability to stick with my franchise mode playthroughs.

I know I’m not unique here, and it doesn’t come from a place of boredom, it’s just another version of that shiny toy syndrome. Some want all the roster moves and everything to be up to date every single game, which is why 30-team control (or the equivalent for the given sport) is what some people swear by. For me, it’s not coming from a place of wanting roster perfection, it’s more that I just want as many real players as possible in my dynasty mode, and it would be cool to have more accurate ratings (and numbers) for these teams.

Of course, why does that matter in Year 4 of a dynasty where all but the freshman who are now seniors are even “real” players at this point? Well, I never said this desire was rational and don’t assume I’m a rational person. I mean Hans Gruber should have taught you that assuming things can get you in trouble many years ago.

But it’s a fair question, and I can’t answer it. The heart wants what it wants I suppose. But the thing that is holding me back from starting over this weekend at this point is obviously the connection to my team. My one-star school is slowly making its way up the ranks, and we’re thinking of moving to a new conference soon. I’m invested, and I didn’t have plans of skipping town for a better job just yet as I still would love to make the CFB Playoff one time at New Mexico.

Still, even with the memories, there’s more than just a roster update that’s interesting me in the restart. I’m not in love with how I did my coaching skill tree this time around. I’m still learning even now about the coaching skill tree, and it’s a bit absurd that we can’t re-spec coaches in the middle of a dynasty. I suppose the issue is that the pipelines or other things you level in the skill tree itself could get messed up if you reset it, but it still seems weird that something that is in most way more complicated RPGs isn’t here. Even if you could only re-spec in the offseason, it feels like something should be available.

And so I have these little things just needling me, and the grass is looking greener and greener the longer I look at my next door university’s lawn. And it will be another university if I restart because I couldn’t just restart with the same team. I never do that — I can’t do that. Those memories are sacred, and I don’t want to rewrite them. My New Mexico dynasty only has one timeline, it won’t be rewritten.

But whether it’s Bill Walsh College Football ‘95 or College Football 25, I’ve been having these same back-and-forth battles in my head about new vs. existing franchises/seasons since I’ve been playing sports games. It’s easier now to have multiple saves and give yourself an out if you end up having regrets about starting over, so in that sense it has gotten easier to get out of a choice, but at the same time, it’s just made restarting all the more easy, which isn’t good for me because restarting is already what I lean towards in most cases.

I’ll sleep on it one more night and ultimately make my choice at that point, but I feel like you probably know which way I’m leaning, and I hope some of you get where I’m coming from and why the new hotness usually wins out for me. Anyway, thanks for being my gaming therapist this week, I needed to get that out. Let’s get to a little news.

Review Season Is About Wrapped Up

KG put out his review of Undisputed last weekend, and it’s a unique review in that he’s been playing this boxing game for well over a year before it was “officially” released on consoles. What with the nature of early access and all that, KG gave his thoughts on the full console release and what he hopes to see post-release. And I think it was important for him to mention post-release because while we get Fight Night rumors every now and again, boxing fans have to hope Undisputed does well enough to stick around. We probably won’t get another game with this much licensing unless EA or another big publisher comes back around, so it’s easy to want to root for Undisputed’s success.

As for other games with punching in them, Kevin also put out his review of NHL 25 last weekend. He had pretty similar thoughts to those I shared in this newsletter a couple weeks ago, albeit he’s maybe a bit more down on the game than me. Either way, the gameplay is really what you’re playing this game for if you stick around because he’s right that innovation in a lot of other portions of the game just isn’t there.

Elsewhere, the NBA season did kick off this week, and this means we got some new courts in 2K25. I also made a quick post highlighting how to handle free agency in 2K25 because the game does still have a legacy issue where too many good free agents will end up rotting in free agency in the offseason.

Before Thursday Night Football (the refs really just did not want to call that facemask penalty I guess?), EA did release a new roster update for Week 8. It does include DeAndre Hopkins getting moved to the Chiefs on top of the expected ratings changes.

If Madden isn’t your thing, College Bowl and Legend Bowl are now fully integrated with each other, and so you can import your draft class from College Bowl into Legend Bowl if you pay for the feature on Steam. I wonder how many people would pay for something like this in College Football 25, but I guess I shouldn’t wonder about things like that as it might lead to a whole new fresh hell of microtransactions. (Super Pixel Games is allowed to do this and I’m totally okay with it because it’s the tiniest of teams and the games aren’t full price anyway.)

Lastly, have you heard the Yankees and Dodgers are playing in the World Series? I know, crazy! Dodgers and Yankees fans both smell (sorry, that’s just factual info), but Xbox Free Play days are in effect this weekend for MLB The Show 24. If you somehow never played this year’s game, here’s your chance if you just didn’t want to spend on Game Pass at any point.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase