FIFA 19

tornado cross

There are probably three main reasons for enjoying simulated football games;
1) making a great last-ditch slide tackle
2) playing a beautiful through pass that breaks the line of defense
3) firing a first-time shot into the goal that surprises both player and opponent

All three are virtually broken in this snoozefest, killjoy game.

As for FUT, it represents all that is wrong with the capitalist economic system in the world.

EA is evil and a boring evil at that.

I used to purchase FIFA each year but eventually lost the passion for the franchise. The gameplay started to feel the same each year, and the computer seemed to cheat (suddenly became extremely difficult in the final minutes if you were winning). So with my last instalment being FIFA 13, I decided to return to the franchise to see how different it is. The improvements to the graphics, physics and general attention to detail is very impressive.

Many players look insanely good, and even have finer details like tattoos. You have ballboys/managers/substitutes on the side line, and the managers have their likenesses too. Even the pitch announcers amazed me; I was playing a Yorkshire derby of Sheffield Wednesday vs Leeds United and the announcer spoke with a strong Yorkshire accent. In another game, I heard the announcer state a fan needs to move their car! If you have been to a football game before then you will have heard an announcement like that. Usually the crowd in football games is lazily done and in some games, they were just a pixelated mess. This time, they are well-detailed and you can tell which shirts they are wearing. Sometimes you are shown the crowd to see their reaction. The different cups have a different aesthetic to the HUD and have different commentators.

I seem to remember FIFA games feeling slow and sluggish leading up to the time I gave up. The pace is still fairly slow, but the players are far more responsive, meaning you can dribble much more smoothly to drag the ball around a defenders foot. You still have moments where faster players beat defenders for pace, leading to one-on-ones with the keepers, but the slow play allows some swift passing movements.

The animations, better physics and finer control/movements of the ball lead to some truly spectacular goals. I think in previous FIFAs, many goals looked similar, but I was amazed at how unique the majority of my goals seemed.

You have a much finer control of your teams tactics, so can switch out formations and player behaviour as you toggle through the settings (using Left/Right on the D-Pad) of Ultra Defensive, Defensive, Balanced, Attacking, and Ultra Attacking. You also have some Defensive and Attacking tweaks you access via Up/Down on the D-Pad, so you can get players in the box, player wider by hugging the touchline, team press, play the offside trap and more.

There's a new shooting mechanic which you can switch off, (or not use at all) which requires a second timed button press. Succeeding gives you more power and accuracy, but failing will under-hit/slice the ball. It's basically a risk/reward system, which mainly needs to be utilised when shooting from range.

You don't get many fouls in the game since the AI often doesn't play dirty. This means the action keeps flowing rather than constantly been pulled back for set pieces. The set pieces themselves are probably the most disappointing aspect of the game. Free Kicks are hard to score from, many corners seem to be cleared by the defenders, and Penalties seem very dodgy. I found the direction was extremely sensitive so aiming left then tapping the stick right will send the ball way wide of the right post! I found a lot of my shots were far weaker than I anticipated, and the keeper often saved them when you play on World Class or higher.

There's the usual modes of one-off games in Kick Off, the squad building card game Ultimate Team, Career and story mode The Journey (which is in it's third season).

Kick Off mode has a new House Rules mode where you can specify new rule subsets like “First to X”, “Headers and Volleys”, “No Rules”, “Survival” (score a goal and a player from your team is removed). You also have a decent selection of female international teams to play in Friendlies. I was a bit disappointed that the “First to X” style mode was still time-bound to 120 in-game minutes.

Career mode has all kinds of objectives like developing youth players, improving your teams reputation, in addition to competition targets. When you negotiate contracts, your manager, player and agent are all modelled and you can see their reaction. You negotiate wage, contract length, bonuses and release clauses.

In The Journey, the story follows three player's careers; Danny Williams, Alex Hunter, and Kim Hunter. I hadn't played previous years, but it seems Danny and Alex were good friends, but their relationship is strained when Alex moves abroad in a big money move to Real Madrid. Meanwhile, Danny's team (you can pick a Premier League team) have had great success in the previous season and are in the Champions League. His brother plays for Champions League contenders PSG, and Danny has a competitive relationship with him. Kim is a youngster who has been called up the USA National squad to take part in the World Cup and struggles to balance her schoolwork with her footballing duties. She is also in Alex's shadow, and doesn't seem to get the respect from journalists; who are more concerned with asking about Alex. You play a selection of games over the season, with training sessions to play before each game. This mode is a good place to start because of all the practice you can do in training. Since it is a story mode, losing certain games forces you to reload and replay the match.

Overall, FIFA 19 is a great game, and it is pleasing to see that the AI no longer cheats to win games. I did go through rough patches during the Career but this seemed due to general form and team morale etc. than artificial difficulty. For people like myself that put the game down years ago, then it's a great instalment to return to.

Se você deseja jogar algo original esse jogo não é pra você, visto que ele é basicamente a mesma coisa do jogo anterior, porem com gráficos melhores, não é um jogo ruim, sendo bem sincero é pelo contrario, porem não é nada muito original.

ENGLISH
If you want to play something original this game is not for you, since it's basically the same thing of the previous game but with better graphics, it's not a bad game, being pretty fair it's the opposite, it's just not original.