Fifa 19 kick-off mode updates make the game's most basic mode a lot more exciting

Change the rules – or have none at all, with a special mode that kicks the referee off the pitch

(EA Sports)

Fifa's kick-off mode might be the game's most central feature, but it's not always felt that way – as other ways of playing the game like manager mode have become more and more advanced, and others like Ultimate Team have both been invented and flourished, the humble mode has stayed largely the same.

But the most basic and arguably central game mode is finally receiving some changes in the latest update. And the exhibition mode certainly has something to show off about it.

It comes with a whole new ways of playing: survival, where players are gradually kicked off the pitch, and headers and volleys, where you can only score if you're doing so from the air.

It also has new ways of weighting games, so that the days of easily beating someone or having to pick strange teams are over. The game now has something like a handicap system, allowing the best players to start further behind.

And there are new ways of cataloguing all of those matches, with logins that allow players to track how they've done against each other in the most minute detail. You can finally know where you tend to score from against your house mate, for instance, or prove to your best friend that you really do get that much more possession.

Taken together, the kick-off mode changes are a fundamental redesign and restatement of the importance of that much-loved but unchanged part of Fifa.

Perhaps the biggest changes are in the new ways to play. Most simply, you can choose whether you want your game to be a cup final, or part of a specific league, with home and away legs or group stage rules to match; no more playing loads of friendlies against your friends, and each game can be the Champions League final.

(The Champions League and Europa League have both arrived in the new Fifa, a licensing coup that this mode seems partly established to show off.)

But if playing to be the best team in Europe isn't exciting enough for you, you can delve into the "house rules". Those are perhaps the most exciting change to hit Fifa in years: you can choose to play a "first to" match, where a game ends once a score is hit; survival, where a randomly selected player will leave your team if you score; long range or headers and volleys, where only those goals count; or you can choose no rules at all, getting rid of the referee and banishing offsides and fouls with him.

Some of those features like survival are intended as a way of levelling out games. But if they aren't enough, you can use the new advantage system, which allows players to set a starting score or change the level of AI for each team, allowing matches to become a bit more fair.

And once the game is over, the statistics tracking tools will allow players to see how they've done. Not just in each match – though that is available – but across them, since the new game has a log-in system and stores stats with it, allowing you to see every match you've played against anyone else in the finest detail.