FIFA 19 Beta Review: 8 Hands-On Impressions You Need To Know
4. Timed Finishing Feels Kind Of Pointless
EA Sports
One of the biggest changes to FIFA 19's gameplay is the addition of 'Timed Finishing'. Billed by EA as a 'risk vs reward' feature designed to add a new dimension to shooting, players will now be given the option to press the shoot button a second time after charging up their initial shot. If the second touch falls inside the green bar, then they'll be rewarded with a more accurate and powerful blast - mistime it, and it's likely that they'll sky it into the stands.
The most perplexing thing about this feature, sadly, is that it's not actually essential. Players can simply choose to ignore it if they so choose, and though that could be taken as a means to ensure FIFA retains its broad appeal, those looking to use the feature are basically adding more challenge to their game than their needed to be in the first place.
Shooting was, for the most part, fine in FIFA 18. Driven shots were slightly broken, yes, but they weren't unfixable. Timed Finishing, on the other hand, feels like a solution to a problem that wasn't there to begin with - and not a particularly good one at that.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
