Hi everyone. You might be surprised to find me, Neal Sayatovich, writing the Save State column instead of its regular columnist Vincent Mahoney. Vincent is feeling under the weather this week, so I will be taking over his column for him while he recuperates. Think of me as a bad substitute teacher from your past who smoked cigars and made the class watch Billy Bob Thornton movies.

Seriously, I will try to follow Vincent’s normal pattern of focusing in on a couple titles that you might not have heard about or maybe knew about but never got to play. I will do my best to choose two really good games, although Vincent has a much deeper catalog of titles than me to pick from. So anyway, the first for this column is going to be Final Fantasy VIII Remastered, and the second one will be Against the Storm.

Believe it or not, Final Fantasy VIII was the first Final Fantasy game that I ever played, and it’s also one I have still never finished. I booted up the Steam version since my Switch version glitched out on me. After I get finished with it, I want to play Final Fantasy IX. If you are going to jump into a series in the middle, then Final Fantasy VIII is not a bad choice. And this remastered version adds some nice graphics to make it almost seem more modern.

So, Final Fantasy VIII Remastered on Steam was just like I remembered the original version from playing it many years ago, except for the poor controller connectivity. It was very stressful when I got to the part where a mechanical spider chases you and you have to retreat from battles, only to find my trigger buttons were not responsive. That meant I had to shut Final Fantasy VIII Remastered down, and the controls had to be reassigned to prevent me from getting killed.

Once I got it adjusted enough to at least play, I soldiered on. I think this one still holds up well, especially since the enemies and bosses scale up in difficulty with the average party level, something that you did not see too much in older titles.

The main issues I ran into were that the main character Squall can’t be removed from the party, and that Rinoa is gone for long stretches and is not able to earn any experience. This can lead to a pretty skewed party makeup and some challenging fights. One example was when I could only rely on Squall to clear the Ragnarok ship. Squall was level 66 while Rinoa was level 25, so she kept getting one shot killed by the Propagators.

After a while, I needed a break from all that and went back to check out all the new updates made to a much lesser-known game called Against the Storm. I reviewed Against the Storm last year and really enjoyed it. I think other people would too. It’s just that I took a long break from playing roguelikes because they were getting too stressful.

Publisher Hooded Horse and developer Eremite Games have added a lot of great new things to Against the Storm since I last saw it. This includes new buildings, races, and missions to increase replayability. I have not yet been able to see all of the new updates, especially the new races. But the new buildings are already making things much more exciting for the cities in my saved games.

Many of the new buildings add critical benefits that increase raw material gathering or processing. That’s great because getting resources quickly in Against the Storm is a key to survival, especially on harder difficulties.

I was so thankful to be able to more effectively farm resin and not just pray that I earned it from cutting down trees that I ended up playing for quite a few hours. Fishing huts were also introduced in the latest update, which helps solve food scarcity issues while offering a nice seafood buffet for the residents. While the updates may not be flashy, they are solid and make Against the Storm even better. It’s already unique being a roguelike city builder. And now Against the Storm is much easier and more intuitive to play.

Now, I know this is not one of those long, barn burner columns that Vince writes, but I hope I did point out some great titles for people to check out if they are looking for something fun and unique to try out.

Now, here is my final question for you all before I resign my duties as a bad substitute teacher. Would you rather watch Friday Night Lights or Bad Santa?