Back in June, EA Sports made sure the hype surrounding FIFA 19 would be unlike anything fans of the franchise had seen in years. That was because the company announced the addition of the UEFA Champions League (along with Europa League and Super Cup) in the latest chapter of the FIFA series, as EA Sports had finally gotten the license for the biggest club soccer tournament in the world.
EA Sports responded by making an absolutely gorgeous game mode for Champions League. Its small additions (new announcers in Derek Rae and Lee Dixon, special pre-match introductions, and more that you can read about here) make the game mode feel like it’s something special, even separate from what gamers have come to expect from FIFA. This is the same, albeit on a lesser scale, for Europa League matches and Super Cup matches.
But of course, when the match kicks off— whether it’s a regular old match or in one of the new UEFA modes — you’re still playing FIFA. It’s still an 11-on-11 experience that strives to determine who is better at virtual soccer: you or the computer (or a friend, or a teenager in Lyon who enjoys telling you that you’re trash as they maul you, 7-1). For years, EA Sports has left this part more or less alone, save for some small tweaks to the gameplay experience. For every overhaul to career mode or the instillation of a new game engine, actually *playing* FIFA hasn’t changed all that much.
The usual tweak to playing the game occurs via the Active Touch system, which gives you more control over what happens when a selected player’s body makes contact with the ball. Like every small tweak to playing the latest FIFA, the Active Touch system takes about three games for the user to get used to it — if you have ever played a FIFA game before, you know exactly what this is like.
There are also new things like 50/50 battles that make more sense by taking into account when players get to the ball and their attributes that would help them in those situations, along with improvements with regards to passing in the game (it is much easier to string multiple passes together by pinging the ball around, while through passes are almost too perfect). As for shooting, EA Sports added in timed finishing, which is designed to make striking the ball a little more dynamic. Personally, I haven’t quite gotten this down in my time playing the game, so I haven’t attempted timed finishing all that much.
The big change where FIFA 19 shines, though, is its commitment to tactics. EA Sports’ goal in every FIFA release is to make it a little more lifelike, but in past games, this has been through making things look more lifelike. The faces are more accurate, the stadium experience is more realistic, virtual players move like their real counterparts, that sort of thing.
In FIFA 19, however, the act of controlling how your team plays soccer is more realistic than ever. It is here where the game truly shines, as gamers now have far more control over their team. While setting up your formation and starting XI in FIFA 19, you now possess the ability to make the five ways your team can play — ultra-defensive, defensive, balanced, attacking, and ultra-attacking (sadly, park the bus and all-out attack are now gone) — a little different. Formations can change, meaning you can start a match in a 4-3-3 on the default balanced tactics, switch to ultra-attacking tactics and a 3-4-3, score a goal, switch to ultra-defensive, and gut out a 1-0 victory in a 5-4-1.
That’s not all — gamers can now customize how they want to attack and defend in these new tactical gameplans. The style you play on both ends of the pitch can change from one gameplan to the next. In defense, you’re able to customize how deep and wide your team plays. In attack, you can adjust how wide your team plays, along with how many players you want bombing into the 18-yard box and how many players you want up on corners and free kicks.
Though it’s nowhere near as comprehensive as, say, Football Manager, it can be a bit tedious. Still, once you get it all down and figure out how you want your team to play — this will probably be easier for longtime FIFA players as opposed to those picking up the game for the first time — you have total control of how your team plays. In a smaller tactical change that I liked, when you (in my case on my Xbox One) press up or down on the D-Pad to adjust attacking and defending tactics, you can actually turn them on and off, meaning you can instruct your team to press, then tell them when to stop. It’s a little change, but it’s one that pushes the game further as it looks to give gamers more tactical control.
Career Mode is basically the same as FIFA 18, for better or worse, while Ultimate Team’s biggest overhaul is reimagining Online Seasons as Division Rivals. As for The Journey: Champions, EA Sports didn’t let the final chapter of the Alex Hunter saga get hogged up by its main character’s move to Real Madrid. Instead, you have the flexibility of playing with Hunter; his younger sister, Kim; and his best friend, Danny Williams.
For my money, though, the most fun twist to FIFA 19 is the decision to change up your standard Kick-Off. Obviously you can still play your standard match against the computer or someone sitting next to you on your sofa, but now, there are a handful of different ways you can play that totally reimagine a game of FIFA, and my goodness, are they a blast.
Once you select whether you want to be the home or away side, the following screen pops up. It gives you the opportunity to play a standard match, one of the number of House Rules matches (more on this in a sec), a Champions League final, one of an impressive number of Cup finals, a home-and-away, or a best of series.
Five of these are pretty self-explanatory. The one that requires going a little more in depth are the House Rules matches, which are the most fun I have had playing FIFA in years. Your options:
Survival is the most fun, as you can tell by the description above. No Rules is also a joy, especially if you love mauling people with tackles or firing a ball to a striker who is perpetually 15 yards behind the defense. Long Range counts goals from outside the 18-yard box as worth double, Headers & Volleys won’t count them at all unless they’re scored via header or volley (go figure), and First To… causes your heart rate to climb when you’re playing to three and find yourself down, 2-0.
Oh, and if you prefer to play with your friends, the new Kick-Off mode can give you a glimpse into stats from all the times you’ll go up against any other person (or the AI), a treat for those who insist that scoring more goals than your opponent could mean you’re lucky, not good.
Between the myriad of new game modes, the addition of Champions League, and the new emphasis on tactics, this is the most fun version of FIFA that has come out in some time. It’s absolutely worth playing, and even if you’re a fan of the franchise, it gives you something exceedingly rare: The opportunity to experience something you’ve played a million times before in a brand new way.
FIFA 19 will be released on Sept. 28, 2018.
