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…
I’m about to age myself here: I remember when getting a box of ten 3.5-inch floppy disks was a big deal. With each disk having 1.44 MB of memory, such a box was a whopping 14.4 MB of storage! That meant so many photos back then, or little arcade games…
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As much as we all live in a world that champions the idea that speech should be as free as possible (rightfully so, of course), we make exceptions to that rule all the time (also, rightfully so). For example, it has been illegal to advertise cigarettes across much of the…
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Doraemon’s second crossover outing with the Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon formula isn’t as impressive as the first. The basic game is the same, but while the first comes across as an inspired effort to bring two of the most wholesome Japanese properties together, now we already know it works, so…
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Paradigm Paradox has a smart idea behind it: This is a magical girl story where most of the girls are, in fact, boys! The boys (and love interests) in this otome story magically turn into women when they are out there saving the world, before shifting back to male form…
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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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Polish off those game of the year trophies, because God of War: Ragnarök is almost certainly going to win a bunch of them. Whether it deserves them, though, is another matter entirely. People are going to love it because this is a massive, visually stunning, and viscerally entertaining game. However,…
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Should sequels be fully self-contained, and independent of the other games in the series. Or should sequels rely on players having played the previous entries, and build an epic plot that extends across generations? In the podcast this month we discuss the pros and cons of both approaches. What are…
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While we have seen a lot of retro compilations, rereleases, remakes and other re-things in recent years, there are still a lot of games that remain on ice, one the consoles of yesteryear, and we’ve never seen them back. That’s what we talk about on this podcast! the forgotten properties…
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“These days, because technology in graphics have advanced as far as they have, you have this very clear contrast between graphics that are almost photorealistic and those that really lean into the side of animation. I feel like there’s less of a middle ground as it were, and you’ve really…
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NOTE: THIS RECORDING STARTS ABOUT 5 MINUTES AFTER THE BROADCAST: You’ll hear me trying to figure out something at the very start. I had the most horrible sound feedback at the start of the broadcast last night, so this video had been edited to remove that bit. The rest of…
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