FIFA 19 Gets a Slew of Neat new Modes and Rules

I’m not normally one for sports games, unless Mario and his Mushroom Kingdom pals are headlining. And while FIFA 19 and EA doesn’t promise to bring the same level of whimsy and party fun that Nintendo typically does, the game does look to shake up the standard football (or Soccer to you filthy Americans) formula by including a newly revamped mode called Kick-Off mode. Back in the past there was nothing terribly exciting about Kick-Off mode, but now EA is adding some optional rules, called “House Rules” for the mode that will make it a bit more interesting for all parties involved.

For example, one mode is called “No Rules,” which is exactly what it sounds like: the refugees have been bribed so much by both teams that they basically go home for the day, and now nothing is illegal. You can be as foul and aggressive as you want and the game will just keep going.

They also have rules that double the points you get if you shoot at it from a long way, ones that force you to use your head to score, or where there’s a goal limit. But by far the most interesting is called “Survival”, which actually isn’t as grim as it sounds. Rather, it’s a mode where you lose a person on your team every time you score. Not only does this make the game a bit more competitive (it’s easier to play when you have more players, unsurprisingly), it also introduces a slick new win condition: it’s normally impossible to play with less than seven players, as you’d get disqualified. But in this mode, that’s the goal: hitting less than seven players means you automatically win.

Is this enough to make me pick up FIFA 19? No, of course not. But I thought it was cool anyway.