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.
To start this review with something very personal: My father passed away last week. It’s been difficult, to put it mildly. The reason I bring it up is that Dad absolutely loved Ten-Pin Bowling. Had his own ball, ball bag (I had no idea they made bowling ball bags), shoes, the works. He competed in social leagues all over the…
Having not played the original Code Vein, I have no idea whether Code Vein II is effective in building on it, or whether the two games are related at all. What I do know is that Code Vein II is an excellent soulslike. One that starts quite slowly, but has…
It’s incredible that Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergarde plays so well on…
Lached Up Games serves a very specific niche with its quirky and…
Kirby Air Riders is fun. It’s not any more than that, and it’s clearly filler for Nintendo to pad out the all-important first Christmas for the Switch 2. With Metroid coming soon, Kirby’s there for the younger ones to also have something under the tree. And it’s fun. The basic…
Read More
Tetris Effect (by the same developer as Lumines Arise) was a breakthrough puzzle game in the way it utterly transformed how we look at action puzzle games as audiovisual experiences. It was, essentially, an interactive music video with some of the coolest, most rhythmically vibrant music. The way it inspired…
Read More
Football Manager is in a fortunate position of having no meaningful competition. Most other sports properties have at least one contender tilting at the windmills, but for Football Manager, the biggest risk has always been that people simply get bored with it. And given that this is a series that…
Read More
Jeff Vogel is a legend. It’s not because he’s produced a game that has sold a billion copies. The likes of EA, Microsoft and others haven’t come sniffing for his company, Spiderweb Software, like they did for Bioware, Obsidian and others. He’s a legend for another reason: For decades now,…
Read More
Sacred 2 Remaster is such a hot mess of a hot mess of a game. To be very clear: I love it so, so much. Sacred 2: Fallen Angel was released back in 2008. Remember those days? We all had PlayStation 3s and Xbox 360s. Physical retail for games was…
Read More
Of all the empires in all of history, the Roman Empire seems to have a unique ability to captivate. Perhaps because it was the first large-scale European empire – the one that “tamed Europe” as such, and so people look to it as the genesis of “Western civilisation.” It’s certainly…
Read More
When Square Enix revealed the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, there was always the sense that they weren’t going to be done with this, and so it wasn’t totally surprising when it was announced that the first two games in the legendary “Erdrick Trilogy” would get the same treatment. Related…
Read More
Koei Tecmo has brought its Musou “Warriors” formula to Nintendo properties five times now – twice with Fire Emblem and now, with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, three times with The Legend of Zelda. This one might just be the most cohesive and coherent of them yet, and shows just…
Read More
It’s kind of incredible that we’re already at the point where handheld PCs are onto a second (or is it third?) generation, given that they do feel so revolutionary and like a dream device. It’s also not surprising that now is the time that a company like Microsoft would now…
Read More
Let’s face it, most of the early Mortal Kombat games are not the kinds of things that you’d like to pick up and play today. In comparison to something like Street Fighter 2, the digitalised character approach that the developer took means clunky movement systems and the combo systems tend…
Read More