Se a few days ago we focused on the gameplay news of FIFA 19, today we can finally talk to you about the juice of the game, about what we are sure you are waiting for with more anxiety: the changes and new FIFA Ultimate Team introductions! But let's start first with another great novelty of this year's game, more aimed at those who still love to play with friends on the sofa and offers new ways of living FIFA, the most revolutionary since the departure of FIFA Street and the days of the legendary pitch indoor of FIFA 98: Road to the World Cup (game that also makes the lion's share in our Top 20 of the best songs of FIFA).
Kick Off: the story of a challenge
The big news of FIFA 19 in terms of modes - at least for what we know so far! - is definitely the renewed Kick Off, which offers much more than the simple chance to compete by choosing your favorite teams or perhaps following the most anticipated clashes of the week. First, from now on each player will create his own Kick Off ID, basically a name that will be linked to your account. The game will store information about each game played by each profile and calculate all sorts of statistics on the performance on the field of each player, also and above all in direct clashes with other Kick Off IDs. Imagine having your console at home: you will probably compete often with friends, siblings, boyfriends, grandmothers, puppies and goldfish. By creating more profiles in FIFA 19 you can finally silence all the diatribes about who is actually stronger, why the game will record the history of your challenges, complete with statistics. We already know that we will waste hours on these screens ...
And all of this won't just happen on your home console: you can in fact download your account on a friend's machine and defend your honor even on the road. During the presentation we thought how much it would be great if EA decided to make Kick Off accounts cross-play between the different platforms and break down the barriers at least in this, but perhaps we ask too much.
The FIFA arcade
But all these statistics to play what? Simple friendly? First of all, FIFA 19 will leave the player the choice of the stage where to set your challenges, choosing between simple summer friendlies, league matches or even decisive Europa League matches up to the Champions League final. Electronic Arts will also rightly want to squeeze the most out of its new licenses.
But the best is yet to come, as Kick Off will feature not only games with the classic rules, but also new reinterpretations of the game of football, absolutely crazy and absolutely fun. In FIFA 19 you can play games where long shots are worth 2 goals instead of one, or try your hand at one survival challenge, where with every goal scored, the leading team will send a player to the bench, potentially rebalancing the fortunes. You can calculate a handicap of goals or players when maybe you will challenge your mother, or you can play who scores only on the fly or with the head, as in a virtual version of the classic "German". The most exhilarating palm among these variants, however, brings home the one it proposes matches without fouls and without offside, able to transform us all into old-fashioned Inzaghi and Montero, in a sea of laughter. Surely these are additions that the hardcore FIFA fanbase will hardly try more than a handful of times, but which could entertain like never before those who do not dedicate so much time online to the game.
What we don't know is whether you will be able to challenge your friends to these fun football variations online too; at the moment Kick Off was presented to us only locally: this does not exclude a possible integration of the game on the net here too, but we await official news from EA Sports before launching into ruminations.
Let's talk about FUT: here is the Division Rivals!
Nice friendlies, graphics, precision shots, but we know that in the end what really matters to many of you is Ultimate Team. This year the changes are many (and there could also be surprises), mainly contained under the umbrella of the new system of Divisions and Division Rivals (Division Rivals), which replaces the Online Seasons. Basically, after you have created your first team, you will have to take part in a series of online qualification matches, a bit like what happens in the competitive playlists of a Rocket League, for example. After playing these matches, FIFA 19 will assign you to a division, based on your skill level; it will be just the beginning because all the games then played in FUT 19 will make you grow (or lose) positions in the division: the best will then be promoted to the higher divisions.
Every week you will have to take the field with your rivals in the division: EA Sports wants to emphasize new weekly competitions similar to Squad Battles, but now against human opponents. At the end of the week the prizes will be awarded and from this year you will be able to choose between four options, looking for the one that can be most useful to you (credits, players, etc.).
Moving on to Weekend League, the qualification system has changed here too: the development team always wants to reward the best, but realized that the existing method was a little too "bad": we know that a defeat in the qualification matches was enough to lose your place in the league. In FIFA 19 every game played, even losing, earns points and moves towards the goal of qualification. Certainly it will be more complex to enter the Weekend League with losses or maybe starting from the lower divisions, but EA Sports wanted to give a chance to some outsiders to be able to enjoy the limelight, if good or lucky enough in a given week. Another possible way to enter the tournament will be through i Champions Points: you can find them among the tournament prizes and, if you collect enough, they can be converted into a token for participation in the league.
Divisions will be Ultimate Team's new daily bread this year: even the fights in FUT Champions will affect your skill level and position in the leaderboard, so as not to fragment your efforts on the pitch.
Ultimate Team 19 offers so much more
Many of you will be curious to know how the Champions League and the Europa League will also impact within Ultimate Team, but here we have to disappoint you in spite of ourselves: EA has still remained buttoned up on this part of the game, but making sure that we will soon know. more. We can instead present the 10 new Icons and legends that will join the title roster. There are old acquaintances from the Italian league and real international champions:
- Rivaldo
- Cruyff
- Lampard
- Eusebio
- Seedorf
- Raul
- Makelele
- Gerrard
- Klose
- Cannavaro
Finally, the developers have also proposed a number of QOL (Quality of Life) changes to the FUT experience, first making more intuitive the management interface of the mode, presenting new animations for opening the packages, complete with effects, animations and completely in 3D and for the first time inside the bags we will also be able to find the Player Picks, in practice elements that will make us choose our favorite among five players to add to our team, similar to what happens in FUT Draft. The idea is to avoid filling your bench with goalkeepers if you are looking for a striker or vice versa, etc.
If we add our more than positive impressions on the gameplay and the many news announced for now and we talked about today, we can do nothing but circle the date of September 28, 2018 in red in the calendar, when the game will arrive in stores. Also, with Gamescom in the middle the news may not be over yet (we have yet to find out how it will go to Alex Hunter for example) ...
► FIFA 19 is a Sport-type game developed and published by Electronic Arts for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 28/09/2018
FIFA 19 is a beautiful game that cannot be missing from your collection: we have decided to evaluate it with a 80%, if you are interested in learning more you can read the FIFA 19 Review
