Gaming
Games
How to cheat in FIFA 19
Give yourself an advantage over your pals in the sneakiest ways possible
There are very few better multiplayer games out there than FIFA 19, but as fantastic as it is to play against your mates, it can get tough if you’re rubbish at the game.
If you want to avoid getting a regular tonking, there are a couple of solutions you can try out. Of course, the serious solution is to practise, practise and practise some more until you’re a FIFA master, but if you're a total noob who has been challenged by someone with far more experience, you could try some sneakier tactics for a laugh.
Now, just to be clear, we don’t condone some of the more serious methods of cheating, like deliberately lagging your game online or buying coins from dodgy online stores. These will affect your standing in the game at best, and get you banned at worst.
We’re talking about cheekier methods, harmless stuff that will annoy your pals but won’t have any more serious consequences than a few raised voices and a thrown controller or two. That said, let’s get cheating!
1. Tamper with the players’ stats
Whack them all up to 99
© EA Sports
If you’re the sort of player who stubbornly refuses to play as any team other than the one that you support, this can be a problem if your chosen side is a bit rubbish in FIFA.
To even the odds, go to the game’s customisation options and choose Edit Player. This gives you access to the stats of every player in the game and lets you make them as high or low as you want.
Do you regularly play FIFA with your mate, and do they always pick the same team? You can go to that team and reduce each player’s stats by 5 or 10, then increase the player stats of the team you usually play as. If you’re subtle enough about it, you’ll get an edge and they won’t even notice.
2. Change the assists
Change Shot Assistance to manual
© EA Sports
FIFA 19 turns on a bunch of gameplay assists by default in order to make the game more entertaining. Turn them off and things suddenly get a lot more frustrating.
The good news is you can tweak the assists for each controller, so when your pal pops to the loo that’s your chance to go to the controller settings and change their passing, shooting, through ball and crossing settings from Assisted to Manual.
If they’re used to playing with the default controls they’ll suddenly realise that their shots are going into Row Z, their passes are wayward and their crosses never reach their intended target.
All the while you can tut sympathetically and say: “It just isn’t your day today, mate."
3. Sweaty goals
Square it for a sweaty goal
© EA Sports
The debate over whether ‘sweaty goals’ are cheating has been raging since the turn of the millennium, thanks to the way they were so easy to score in early PES games.
While they’re not too evil, some people see them as outright cheating, and if you can exploit them your opponent will likely lose their mind.
The idea is to approach the goal, get as close to the goalie as possible so that he’ll head towards you, then square a pass to a teammate who gets to slot the ball into an empty net.
Cutbacks like this may not be cheating in the traditional sense, but the fact that FIFA 19 still hasn’t really figured out a way to make them more difficult to pull off means that they’re still an extremely cheap method of scoring.
4. Fiddle with your TV’s input lag
Turn on image processing features to cut out timed finishes
© EA Sports
Time to get a little more technical, and a little more ridiculous. If you’re going to go this far, you must really want to get one over on your friend.
FIFA 19 includes the new Active Touch System, where your shot will be far more accurate if you press the shoot button a second time just as your player’s foot touches the ball.
If your pal’s mastered this then they’ve got a real advantage because their shots will hit the target almost every time. To counter that, it’s time to head into your TV’s settings.
Take a note of your existing settings (so you can change them back later) and then try to turn on as many image processing features as you can. Anything that has a snappy name – cinema mode, TruMotion, dynamic colour, that sort of thing – if it’s off, get it on.
The idea is that the more processes your telly carries out to improve the picture, the more input lag this creates. That’s why many modern TVs have a ‘Game’ setting – this turns all these processes off so there’s less delay between you pressing a button and the action happening on-screen.
If you turn all those processes back on without telling your pal, it’ll completely throw off their timing and lead to most of their shots flying wide or over. Just make sure that you stick to single-button shots so it doesn’t affect you.
5. Rename your FUT squads
Mind games were good enough for Alex Ferguson
© EA Sports
Cheating online is frowned upon and we don’t condone it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take part in a few mind games to mess with your opponent’s head.
We recommend renaming all your FIFA Ultimate Team squads and giving them all names that make them sound like your second-choice team. Stuff like Reserves, B Team, Backup and so on.
When you start a FUT match online and you connect to your opponent, they’ll see your squad and its name – this’ll make them think they’re playing your second-string team.
Depending on their mentality, this can have two effects. It could make them relax a bit and leave them more open to attack. Also, if take the lead, it could stress them out to think that they’re losing to a team that isn’t even your best one. Both situations give you a psychological advantage.
6. Mess with the sliders
Cheat Career mode in the game settings
© EA Sports
If you’re more of a solo player, here’s a classic trick that should make modes like Career much easier. Go to the Game Settings menu and move across a few tabs until you get to the ‘User gameplay customisation’ and ‘CPU gameplay customisation’ screens.
Here, you’ll be able to tinker with every element of the way the game is played, from your sprint speed and stamina to how likely your shots and passes will hit their intended target.
If you fancy cheating your way to some easy Career mode wins, slide all yours to 99 and all the CPU’s to 0 for the most ridiculously one-sided game of FIFA you’ll ever play.
7. Trigger a power cut
You’ll need a partner for this one. Sometimes, no matter how many sneaky tricks you try, your friend is just better than you at FIFA and that’s all there is to it.
If they’re over at your house playing a match and they start beating you like they usually do, during their next goal celebration grab your phone and message your partner: “Now.”
Your partner can then access your fuse box and flip the power off in your entire home, plunging the house and your TV into darkness and rendering the match null and void.
Um... actually, we’ve probably gone a bit too far there.
