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.
If I were to create a laundry list of what I look for in a JRPG, the simple reality is that the Ys series doesn’t tend to check many of those boxes. They’re not known for in-depth narratives, iconic characters (aside from the series protagonist, Adol, who has a very “blank template” look to him), or particularly thoughtful, nuanced combat.…
To get this out of the way up-front: We need to be wary about art (games, films, books, whatever else) that depict apocalyptic scenarios where some form of invader from without swarms the world and you’re in control of the last nation standing, holding back the horde. It’s an incredibly…
Hello everyone, and Happy Holidays! What a year it has been, too.…
It’s that time of year again! We’re counting down the days to…
The Touch Detective series has always been a bigger deal in Japan than the West, and it is easy to understand why. When the original was released in Europe and North America, it was several months after Phoenix Wright landed, and (in Europe, anyway), a few months after the first…
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This month on the Digitally Uploaded podcast, we dive deep into Dragon’s Dogma 2, as a rare example of an open world that delivers on the promise of open world games. It’s not for everyone… but wow is it a work of art. We also discuss how game developers on…
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If there’s anything that’s going to inspire me to get super fit, it’s Hatsune Miku. Well now, Big Fitness, you figured out the trick with me and I now belong to your cult. In all seriousness, though, Fitness Boxing feat. Hatsune Miku is a great time and it does, in…
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Violet Wisteria is two things – firstly, it’s a brute of a game that wears its old-school homage on its sleeve. It’s also heavily inspired by the classic Valis series of fanservicey magical girl platformers. Things start off really well with a story sequence pulled directly from the PC-98 era…
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With the cost of living what it is, premium-grade luxuries like sound equipment are surely one of the things that people are choosing to go without. Meanwhile, mid-quality sound equipment, which gets close enough without breaking the bank, must surely be enjoying a renaissance. After all, in a world this…
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Legend of Legacy is one of the many 3DS titles that deserved to be preserved for hardware that wasn’t dated to a single console. Thankfully, now it has been. This was always a lovely-looking and well-designed, classically-styled JRPG. Now it has not only been preserved across multiple platforms, but it…
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Princess Peach must be a difficult character to work with now. Originally she was the archetypal damsel in distress, which made for a convenient single-line narrative to power Super Mario Bros., but that trope hasn’t done so well over time. Where Princess Zelda has been relatively easy to empower without…
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I just know that people are going to make comparisons between Rise of the Ronin and Ghost of Tsushima, and that’s really quite unfair to Team Ninja’s latest. Already in previews I’ve seen nonsense like “while not a graphical stunner like Ghost of Tsushima”. Where Ghost of Tsushima was trying…
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Given the almost fearsome reputation that Dragon’s Dogma has as a cult favourite (that actually sold better than most people realise), it’s easy to forget that the game wasn’t all that well received at first, and that its Metacritic rating is “only” 78/100. It was a fair analysis however, for…
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1992’s Alone in the Dark is one of those genuine masterpieces of our little medium. Four full years before Capcom, deeply inspired by Frédérick Raynal’s work, hit it big with Resident Evil, Alone in the Dark brought us a non-linear haunted mansion to explore, filled with monsters and puzzles. As…
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