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.
Love Too Easily ties hard, and I’ll give it props for tackling an enormously difficult genre for the video game medium: rom-coms are difficult in literature and cinema, and both of those mediums are far more nuanced for storytelling that extends beyond physical conflict. Unfortunately, Love Too Easily also highlights that video games have some growing up to do. The…
It’s our first episode of 2025, and we’re rolling January and February together, as the team is busy with lifestyle activities like getting married. For this first episode, we run through the intimidatingly big release line-up for February, and then talk in-depth about the Switch 2 – what we saw…
All the best titles on PlayStation Vita were experimental little efforts with…
Welcome to Digitally Downloaded’s weekly catch-up news feature, the catch-up coffee. I…
“It’s more of the same!” You just know that this is going to be the main comment (and complaint) about Octopath Traveler II. “It’s too much like the first.” Except it’s not. Of course it’s not. Octopath Traveler was a narrative-driven game that focused on the stories of eight distinct…
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Like a Dragon: Ishin is a spinoff of the Yakuza series, but it is also so much more than that, as we explore in this video. Yakuza films and samurai films have a long history in Japanese cinema, and they’re actually more closely related than many might think (thematically, at…
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There are three things I look forward to in a Yakuza game: Exceptional writing and storytelling, a vibrant and interesting open world (rare, given how dull and bloated most open worlds are), and an authentic setting that makes me homesick for Japan. Like A Dragon: Ishin! might not have “Yakuza”…
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With the release of Theatrhythm this week, I’ve found myself going through all my Final Fantasy CDs and setting up playlists on my iPhone. One of the reasons I love this series as much as I do is because of the music, so, while it’s fresh in my mind, I…
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The High&Low film series (available via Netflix in the west) is many things. First and foremost, the film series offers some of the most wildly entertaining action to come out of Japan’s cinema industry in recent years. The action in these films is big. So big that you’d be forgiven…
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I often wonder how successful I’d be working as an air traffic controller. It seems like it would be a stressful job, given how quickly air flights can turn deadly, and how busy airports are these days. I also suspect I’d be less-than-good at the job, given how many nightmare…
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While we don’t generally cover geographically-limited news here at DDNet (given that we have an international readership, and stuff happening in Sydney doesn’t mean much to our friends in New York), a press release dropped in my inbox this week for something I couldn’t overlook, because it’s just so neat:…
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Square Enix is a company that has many decades of history, and over that time has built a business filled with competitive advantages. It is a company rich with products, services and IP that are unique to it and continue to underpin its value. Perhaps its greatest single advantage of…
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A new trailer for Lies of P has landed, highlighting bits of gameplay and the narrative. Inspired by Pinocchio and set during the “Belle Epoque Era” (late 19th century through to WW1 in the 20th century), this is one of the most impressive-looking soulslikes from a developer outside of FromSoftware.…
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Little Witch Nobeta has been a significant (and perhaps mildly surprising) hit since first releasing on PC last year. For a game developed by a tiny team, having a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, off more than 8,300 players, is a significant achievement. Soon, courtesy of Idea Factory International, the…
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