5 Reasons to Get Excited About FIFA 19

Why we’re excited about FIFA 19

For the millions of gamers around the world who collectively pump an ungodly number of hours into FIFA, a new game and its associated tweaks and upgrades is always a cause for celebration.

FIFA 19, though, feels like a big one. EA Sports has finally made changes that fans have been crying out for: it’s added yet more licenses to what is probably the most licensed game on the planet, and put in a few features that should make a real change to how the game is played.

If you’re still on the fence though, here are five reasons to get excited about FIFA 19.

Fifa 19 is launching 28th September. It’ll be available on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch, PS3 and Xbox 360.

The Champions League

For me, just hearing that orchestral swell and “the champions” brings back memories of staying up late on schoolnights to witness England’s finest pitted against Europe’s elite. If you’re in the same boat, then the news that EA has finally snagged the Champions League and Europa League licenses from Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer series is surely enough reason alone to buy FIFA 19. It’s going to feel genuinely different too, complete with new dedicated commentary from Derek Rae and Lee Dixon, and it’s going to be in almost every mode FIFA has to offer.

Most excitingly, you’re going to be able to play one-off Champions League finals in the revamped Kick Off mode with whatever teams you choose. As much as it pains me to admit it, it’s the only way my beloved Sheffield United are ever going to play in a Champions League final.

The New Kick Off

Yes, with FIFA 19, EA Sports has finally lavished some attention on Kick Off. It has finally recognised that a vast number of FIFA players spend lots of time just playing random matches or facing off against their mates. As mentioned on the previous page, you’ll now be able to play one-off finals (Champions League, Europa League, FA Cup, Carabao Cup etc.), which should put an end to the tedium of every Kick Off match being treated as a friendly.

The biggest change, though, is the new House Rules option in multiplayer, allowing you to pick from a variety of different options that put a twist on standard FIFA. These include No Refs (does exactly what it says on the tin and does away with those newfangled notions of fouls and yellow/red cards), Headers and Volleys (only headed and volleyed goals count), Long Range (goals from outside the area count double), and First to … 2,3,4 etc. (you can probably work that one out). The most fun, however, promises to be Survival, where you lose a player every time you score a goal. It remains to be seen how the game decides which player you lose (and whether you can get down to one player each), but it promises a lot of high-scoring fun.

Touch, timing and tactics

On the pitch, the biggest improvement in FIFA 19 is likely to be the new active touch system. It promises to bring a new level of control and will enable all sorts of flicks and tricks. In practice, it sounds like the team at EA Vancouver has redone lots of the game’s core animations to ensure that not only does FIFA 19 look better than ever, but you’ll have more options in terms of trapping the ball and reaching balls that are behind or to the side of you.

The other big on-pitch addition is timed finishing, which adds a risk/reward style system to shooting in FIFA. Vitally, this is entirely optional – you can still shoot as you’ve always done – but nailing it will produce a more powerful and more accurate finish. The system works with a double press: your first press will start the shooting animation, and the second press needs to be at the precise moment your foot strikes the ball. Get it wrong and the ball goes into row Z. The system is contextual, which means it should take a while to master.

Finally, there are new dynamic tactics options in FIFA 19. You can now minutely calibrate the ultra defensive to ultra attacking slider with custom formations, styles of play, individual player tendencies, and more. While this offers a potentially intimidating level of complexity, from what’s been shown so far, the UI does a great job of simplifying things and illustrating the impact of potential changes. Fundamentally, it’s great that you’ll be able to change tactics on the fly to do more than go all-out attack when you’re 1-0 down in the last ten minutes.

Ultimate Team: Division Rivals

It’s easy to be cynical about Ultimate Team, FIFA’s resident cash cow that turned football gaming into a pay-to-win exercise and then infected countless other sports games. However, if you’re patient and don’t get caught up in the relentless quest to be the very best, you can still have fun in Ultimate Team without spending money. There is an undeniable thrill to opening packs that takes you back to collecting stickers as a child. It’s also not like EA is just sitting back and watching the cash roll in; Ultimate Team keeps getting better and offering new ways to play.

In FIFA 19, the headline innovation is Division Rivals, which offers the tantalising prospect of playing online against opponents of similar ability, rather than being paired with FUT obsessives who play FIFA every hour of the day and have borderline invincible squads. The idea is fairly simple: you play a few placement matches and are then assigned a division. Every week, you play online matches in that division to earn points that give you a rank, which in turn determines your rewards at the end of that week. Do well consistently and you’ll move up divisions.

Division Rivals basically sounds a lot like an online version of the Squad Battles, but with a few tweaks. The first is that you’ll now be able to pick your reward, and the second is that doing well is the new way to earn entry into weekend league, the weekend-long elite FUT contest that’s the gateway to high-end rewards.

The end of The Journey

It’s been confirmed that The Journey is returning in FIFA 19, but this year will mark the end of the Alex Hunter saga. For the final act, EA is switching up the formula, offering three playable characters that you can switch between at any time.

There’s Hunter himself, who’s now secured his dream move to Real Madrid and searching for Champions League glory; his half-sister Kim, on a mission to break into the US women’s team and make her way in the female game; and Danny Williams, who seems to have secured a big move in the summer and has a friendly but intense rivalry with Hunter. You briefly played as both in last year’s Journey, with Kim’s story being significantly more interesting. She’s a quick-witted and lively sparring partner for Alex and brought some much-needed spark to the story.

Personally, I’ve never been entirely convinced by the Journey. The plotting and dialogue both feel a bit too soap opera cliché to really ring true, and it sometimes feels like the game is trying to stick its agenda down your throat. This year is no different (you’re going to Real Madrid whether you like it or not), but it does add a different experience to FIFA for those who want it. The promise is that we’ll get both a peek behind the curtain of what may very well be the world’s greatest team, and a bigger role for the team’s current stars. That should hopefully bring a different dynamic to this year’s Journey and the inclusion of multiple playable characters ought to inject some much-needed variety.