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.
Octopath Traveler 0 isn’t really Octopath Traveler. It’s good. It’s even excellent, frequently and for long stretches of time. But it’s not Octopath Traveler for this very simple reason: Both the original Octopath Traveler and its sequel told the stories of eight (“Octo”) different people, who would eventually come together (“All roads that you travel on, if you will, lead…
I don’t often write about films these days, but I recently saw something at the Japan Film Festival in Australia that was powerful, profound, and haunting enough that it has since occupied all my thinking. Kokuho, directed by one of Japan’s most noteworthy art film directors, Lee Sang-il, is, as…
The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite is a good headset. This is by…
Disclaimer: I’m making this quick disclaimer so it’s clear and up-front. I…
In all the ways that really matter, Persona 3 Reload on the Nintendo Switch 2 is exactly the same as Persona 3 Reload on other platforms. By that I mean it offers the same narrative (with Reload itself not really touching the narrative of the original game). Ultimately, if you’re…
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I was very hesitant to review Ghost of Yotei, as my experience reviewing its predecessor was… less than great. Applying even a rudimentary critical analysis to the artistic side of a major blockbuster game is asking for the fanbase to take it as a personal affront and then proceed to…
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Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is an enormously important game – arguably, you could trace the lineage of so many puzzle blend RPGs back to Puzzle Quest (Puzzle & Dragons, for example). The game itself, released way back in 2007 on the PSP and Nintendo DS by the same…
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I would argue that Silent Hill f is the finest game in a series that has produced some classics, if not masterpieces. A big part of that comes down to it simply having a setting and protagonist that resonates better with me, of course, and it’s certainly no slight on…
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You can always trust Devolver Digital to back interesting, quirky and different projects. One recent example of this is Minos, which is a dungeon-building roguelike from one of its own studios, Artificer. As a fan of Dungeons and Dungeon Keeper, my interest in this was immediately piqued, so we sat…
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Lego Party is a Mario Party clone. Let’s not beat around the bush about that. It is what it is, and the development team at SMG isn’t for a second trying to claim otherwise. The problem is that Mario Party is a pretty challenging formula to get right, and… well,…
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The AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES series is inseparable from the creative identity of Kotaro Uchikoshi. Known beyond AI for the cult-classic Zero Escape trilogy, Uchikoshi is the sort of auteur whose style feels irreplaceable. Which makes No Sleep for Kaname Date, a spin-off produced largely without him, a fascinating experiment.…
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The creative team at Acquire has always had a knack for blending traditional Japanese storytelling with experimental gameplay structures and, in recent years, a particular flair for 2D art. Its upcoming title, Monster Eater, being published by Red Dunes Games, continues that tradition. At its heart is a striking idea:…
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I don’t really play all that many games at Tokyo Game Show. This is in part because I’ve got too much else to do, in meeting contacts and observing trends. But also it’s because the lineups for most of the interesting games tend to be so long, and I really…
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I’ll admit that I’m not the world’s biggest fan of mecha games. I appreciate their appeal, but spending hours tinkering around with mech builds simply isn’t something I’m overly fond of – I’ve never been a min-max statistician when it comes to my beloved JRPGs either. So I missed the…
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