Matt S. is the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of DDNet. He's been writing about games for over 20 years, including a book, but is perhaps best-known for being the high priest of the Church of Hatsune Miku.
It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve had the excuse to write about the supreme Goddess, Hatsune Miku. SEGA’s gone quiet on video games, and I’ve just not been able to line up a trip to Japan at the same time as the annual concerts over there. Related reading: Our review of Miku Project Diva MegaMix on PC.…
Shinto is one of those things that most people who know anything about Japan have some vague concept of, but don’t really know anything about. From experience, they’re also rarely interested and that’s depressing. Tourists in Japan do cheerfully visit Shinto shrines, before mistaking them for Buddhist temples (and vice…
I’m about to really age myself, but when I was young, the…
Every time I see “Wuthering Waves” I think to myself “wow, they’ve…
It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve had the excuse to write about the supreme Goddess, Hatsune Miku. SEGA’s gone quiet on video games, and I’ve just not been able to line up a trip to Japan at the same time as the annual concerts over there. Related…
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Shinto is one of those things that most people who know anything about Japan have some vague concept of, but don’t really know anything about. From experience, they’re also rarely interested and that’s depressing. Tourists in Japan do cheerfully visit Shinto shrines, before mistaking them for Buddhist temples (and vice…
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I’m about to really age myself, but when I was young, the idea of (legitimately) free video games was very different to what it is today. There were no microtransactions, and no Fortnites, Genshin Impacts, or MMOs. If you were playing free, you were either playing shareware demos or very…
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Every time I see “Wuthering Waves” I think to myself “wow, they’ve gone and made a game of Wuthering Heights, my favourite novel of all time.” That is unfortunately not the case, but Wuthering Waves does still look decent, as a free-to-play open-world RPG that has clearly been inspired by…
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An hour isn’t anywhere near enough to get a feel for what any kind of RPG will offer, let alone a Soulslike. Imagine trying to predict what Elden Ring is if you’re only able to reach the limits of that first, lush forest before the demo taps out? You can’t.…
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The best thing about Flintlock is the setting. It’s a hodgepodge of historical influences – the opening sequence focuses on trench warfare and sappers that could be straight out of a World War 1 drama, before the game settles back to a more colonial era affair, set against a horde…
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It’s hard for us in the West to fully appreciate just how core idol companies and groups are in Japan. It’s not just about the music and performance, though that is certainly a big part of it. Idol groups act as talent feeder pools for just about every other part…
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Esports has become a ridiculously big business, sucking up so many dollars that could have gone into interesting, artful games instead. They’re holding an Olympic Esports Games now… and stupidly the IOC chose the authoritarian, puritanical hellnation, Saudi Arabia, for it. Hey, IOC, put Dead or Alive on the competition…
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One of the things that I find continually surprising about video games is the idea that, on the one hand, we consider them to be inherently an art form, but on the other, we just never talk about games in the same frameworks that we talk about every other art…
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I don’t want to spend too long mulling over its flaws, but Princess Maker 2 Regeneration is a good example of a remake handled poorly. I’m not commenting on the quality of the game itself, which is genuinely good and entertaining, and I’ll get to that as soon as I…
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