There's a good chance that, at some point in your life, you've been so enamored of a piece of media that you've considered what it'd be like to experience it for the first time again. Watching Terminator 2, hearing Enter the Wu-Tang, and reading The Dark Knight Returns shaped who I am and, as a result, I remember the moments I experienced them with crystal clarity. Over time, however, those memories have become divorced from the emotions they stirred and what's left in their place is a longing for those lost feelings.

Video games are the only medium that I think are capable of making that first-time-again fantasy a reality--or as close to one as we're going to get. Time puts distance between us and the emotionally significant moments we cherish, but it also brings us closer to exciting technologies that can make the old feel new. In the right hands, those technologies can create opportunities to stoke those profound emotions again, even if it's just a little. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater does exactly that.

Before getting into what's new, what can't be overlooked in making Delta such a good game is the fact that Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater remains a compelling, well-told story that has strong characterization and deals with some heavy subject matter. It approaches this with a strange mixture of self-seriousness and complete irreverence that is uniquely Metal Gear Solid and, for my money, balances both parts better than any other entry in the series. The stellar stealth is supported by systems that feed into the fantasy of surviving in the jungle and braving the elements, whether that be hunting for food or patching yourself up after sustaining injuries. Delta replicates it and, in my opinion, is better for it. The excellent work that the original Metal Gear Solid 3 dev team did remains the heart and soul of Delta, and it continues to shine.

In the aftermath of Stardew Valley's success and popularity, there have been many attempts by other developers to carve their own piece of the pixel farm life simulator pie. Whereas those games so often put you in the role of a poor farmer or some other position of struggle, Discounty does the opposite, having you effectively play as the bad guys in Stardew Valley: the outsider that has everything and is trying to weasel into the community. You're not literally playing a mirror of that game's story, but it's awfully close--instead of being the new farmer in a small, struggling town, you're instead the new owner of the big-brand supermarket that's attempting to monopolize the economy and push out existing vendors to increase your profit margins. It altogether makes for a game that is fun to play (in that hypnotic sort of way that's recognizable in so many games that romanticize retail work), but it is ultimately narratively quite uncomfortable at times and too muddled in its storytelling to utilize that discomfort to deliver a compelling message.

Granted, you're merely the pawn in the palm of the hand of a much greedier capitalist: your aunt. Roped into moving to her small harbor town of Blomkest to help out with her struggling market, you arrive to find she's sold out to the Discounty chain and rebranded. Your aunt is immediately portrayed as a suspicious person, keeping secrets locked away in sheds, making backroom deals with banks, and firing employees without a second thought. It's all in the name of expanding her supermarket business empire, and you're her most loyal pawn, charming locals into going along with your expansions and acquiring their wares so that citizens have to go to Discounty to buy food and home supplies.

It feels scummy, especially since your character has zero backbone, pushing the buck on responsibility and ignoring the consequences of their actions for a big chunk of the game's story, which primarily deals with a hurting community that needs healing.

About a week ago, on the same day I started playing Okomotive's Herdling, I accidentally hit a squirrel with my car. The critter darted into the road, and I tried to evade them, but I failed.

They died. It devastated me.

I called my wife, physically shaking and tearful, to tell her what happened. I sat in my car for a bit when I got to my destination, needing to regain my composure. Though I knew my intent was pure, I found it hard to accept that I had taken their life away. To no one's surprise, if you're familiar with my work, I saw them not as "roadkill," but as a being with their own interests and goals, however simple those may seem compared to those of humans. It wasn't an ideal starting point for heading into Herdling, a game about trying to guide a family of vulnerable animals out of the city and return them safely to their natural habitat. But I'm sure, even on a normal day, Herdling was going to connect with me deeply on account of its moving depictions of human-animal kindness and companionship.

Drag X Drive comes at an interesting time in the launch lineup for the Nintendo Switch 2. Rather than numerous day-one first-party releases that may risk overshadowing each other, the company has been releasing them one at a time, monthly. First we had Mario Kart World--alongside Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, which kind of counts--followed by Donkey Kong Bananza, and now, Drag X Drive. The unconventional sports game is unique in the lineup for not centering around a known franchise. Instead its hook is an almost exclusively multiplayer focus and a novel control scheme based around the system's mouse functionality. But while it's a neat showpiece for how dual-mouse controls can create new game experiences, in practice it's mostly just physically uncomfortable to play.

Drag X Drive follows in the footsteps of games like Rocket League, mixing various influences to create something new. In this case, its closest analogue is wheelchair basketball, a Paralympic sport that allows disabled athletes to play with some modifications. It adds a slight twist to that foundation, though, by taking place inside a skateboarding bowl, allowing players to build up speed and do trick shots to earn score bonuses. It's a neat concept, and one that could pay homage to the athleticism of the real thing while giving it a wild variation. The hub area even has the look and feel of a basketball skate park, with courts living alongside loads of ramps and stunt areas.

The real hook is its control scheme. While other games have made light use of the Switch 2 mouse controls, Drag X Drive is centered completely around it. You detach both Joy-Con controllers and turn them on their side, and sliding them forward together approximates pushing the wheels of your wheel chair. Doing it in rhythm for a while gets you up to top speed, which is what enables your ability to vert off ramps and do tricks, or just rush into other players for a tackle to steal the ball. You lift a hand and flick your wrist to toss a ball into the basket, and tackling a player from the side or back staggers them for a moment and can throw off their attempted shot. Pressing the shoulder buttons acts as your brakes, and the HD Rumble feature lets you feel the tread of the tires as you roll. In theory, you can even pull off hairpin turns by braking with one wheel while pushing the other, or sliding them in opposite directions.

The Madden curse is lifted.

No, not that one--the one I alluded to at the end of my review last year. I'd said it felt like I was cursed to play a frustrating football game year after year forever, because I liked it enough to invest my time (if only for my job and my online league), but I never felt like it was living up to its responsibility as the only NFL sim available on the market. Madden NFL 26 finally gives me hope. Supplementing the great on-field gameplay with a Franchise overhaul that turns Madden into a sports RPG in the way it should be, this is the best Madden in a long time.

Sunday Spectacle

Madden's on-field gameplay has been improving year over year for a good while now. It's not that it can't improve any more, but it's finally in that stage, like some other sports games have reached before, where the foundation is sturdy and, with the most important aspects in a good place, the development team is now focusing on enhancements more than fixes.