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.
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 we enter an era where AI is undermining the very…
The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite is a good headset. This is by far the most uncontroversial thing I’ve ever written at DigitallyDownloaded.net, because with a price tag of AU$1350, you would hope that it’s a good headset. SteelSeries has packed as much sound quality as possible into this thing and,…
Disclaimer: I’m making this quick disclaimer so it’s clear and up-front. I…
Kirby Air Riders is fun. It’s not any more than that, and…
I’m a big fan of itch.io for the freedom and open platform that it allows for developers to be creative, experimental, and directly canvas the audience for feedback for games that are not yet ready for primetime on Steam and its ilk. In addition, itch.io allows you to be transgressive,…
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If Lone Ruin had been released three years ago, it would have been noteworthy. If it had been released a decade ago, it would have been celebrated. The game itself is an excellent example of taut, intense mechanics, a well-designed (and challenging) difficulty curve, and moody aesthetics. Unfortunately, it’s a…
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You probably haven’t heard of Sailing Era, a new simulator our of China, but it just launched on Steam and the Epic Games Store. It’s one worth checking out, because it has some gorgeous aesthetics and sounds really interesting. Also, it’s coming to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch later on, so…
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We had a special guest on the Digitally Uploaded podcast this month – Lachlan, from Lached Up Games! He’s been on the podcast before, but because we love his fanservicey take on Australian visual novels, and the fact he has a new one just out on Steam, we couldn’t resist…
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One Piece Odyssey is a particularly impressive game for one reason in particular: You don’t need to be a fan of One Piece to enjoy it. So often anime tie-in games consolidate the main anime plotline to an extreme degree, just so the developers can squish some form of it…
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Oh yes, I’m going there. With Fire Emblem Engage out in just a week, I’ve decided that DigitallyDownloaded.net needs a solid flood of very angry people, so I’m going to publish the definitive* ranking order of all the Fire Emblem titles released in English. (* Not actually definitive. This is…
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This one has been a long time coming, but NISA has finally given the world a release date for Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. It will land on May 9 in North America, May 12 in Europe, and will have all DLC baked into it. You have, of course, been able…
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2022 was such a jam-packed year for releases that it’s far too easy to forget about some of the great games that were released through the year. So, as part of our podcast this month, we chatted about what our most memorable games of the year were. Not necessarily the…
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The next release in Bandai Namco’s venerable JRPG series, Tales, will launch quite soon – February 17. Rather than being a new game, as such, it will be a remaster, but a remaster of one of the more respected titles in the series. Tales of Symphonia was a GameCube title,…
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Whenever Americans tackle Japanese material or attempt to situate a film, TV series or otherwise in Japan, there’s an inherent tension between what works in American cinema and entertainment, and what is representing Japanese culture and aesthetics accurately. Too often, under these circumstances, the work turns out to be something…
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