I reviewed Star Monkey on Binary Joy

check out the review. This game is great for retro fans who want a modernised shoot em up:

http://www.binaryjoy.co.uk/games/review/star-monkey-review/

Good rewiew. Maybe a touch too defensive. Defense usually suggests the existence of weakness. It may be fair, but probably it will reduce the sales by a couple of copies.

BTW - I really expected some monkeys.

here is my review of your review. ;)

first of all, when you write say "It’s got stars in it?" you should write "That it’s got stars in it?" it's just one word but is so much easier to read. I thought the rest of your review would be similarly erratic, but it wasn't actually, it was very informative. good job.

also, i would have liked to see a rating system, like on gamespot, etc. i'm used to going straight to the rating to get a general overview of how good the game is before i decide to spend the time to read the article.

thanks guys

@jfk EO-11110 "defensive", that's strange, what do you mean?
@muk: oops, I'm normally very good with adding in "that" for readability. I guess (that) the first bit was just supposed be be like a jokey chat (and people often miss out "that" when talking), but I wouldn't want to carry that style on all the way through like some annoying Amiga mags used to do in the old days. The web designed will be adding a rating system too so I can go back and rate my reviews. Anyway, give the game a blast if you like that sort, it is really neat.

It is very difficult to write a review that is completely balanced and fair.

I think you did a fantastic job there though... your review was honest. I liked it.

Antic (the Atari magazine back in the day... took itself too seriously at the end. Reviews were written by people that wrote reviews... not (it seemed) like people that really played games.

You are one of us... a gamer and a programming gamer... thats the rare kind... you know what "could" be there. You probably had a slight bit of difficulty in not telling people what could have been fixed. You know... what you would have done...

That you stated you bought the game is perhaps the best part of the review. You connected with your subject in the most intimate way. You didn't just get a game sent to you for free and play a bit and hammer out a glib bit of fluff. You bought the thing. You committed to it.

I give your review 4 1/2 stars out of five( That woudl be an A-.) you could get the other half star with a stronger conclusion and introduction.

((Did I mention, despite my terrible spelling [most of which is the fact I cannot spell and type at the same time] that I used to teach Creative Writing and Art and Computer Science at the secondary and post secondary level???)

Hey - that's a nice review Jake. I need to pull my finger out and get the star ratings up and running. I'll see if I can do it this evening. Would be nice to get them in - I want to integrate them into the review listing page as well as that would make things a lot more informative.

Rook, thanks very much for the compliment! I'm still getting used to this sort of thing so hopefully I'll get better.

Ben: look forward to it.

"Where's the Monkey(and Banana)?"

It's the first impression I played it....

@yoxola: I'm sorry I don't understand...

Grey - I added star ratings so you can go ahead and add a rating to each of your reviews :)

Hmmm...no screenshots. When I look at a game review I like to see screenshots.

Many people have mentioned screenshots. They are next on my todo list - a nice way to implement them would make a lot of difference

Well, when I first know it's name, I think it's a King-Kong like game or so, however it a STG....

Really weird to me ;)

Ben: Great, will do v. soon!

Yoxola: aha, I see, thanks for clarifying...

[edit] OK, star ratings added to my reviews!

yeah, a few screenshots would help a lot.

i'm confused, you give this game 4 1/2 stars, which seems a bit generous to me, maybe it is a great game but from your review it sounds more average like 3 or 3 1/2 stars ?

Also, it's not really enough when you say "We give it..." a better way would be to have a fixed word for every star like 1=awful, 2=poor, 3=average, 4=good, 5=superb.

Also, i would prefer ratings that cover different aspects of a game. For example, AVault's rating system has: graphics, interface, gameplay, sound fx, musical score, intelligence & difficultly, overall. Although this is probably a bit much, graphics, gameplay, sound and overall would be enough.

I like the .5 rating it's very useful. It's a shame my review doesn't sound like it's worth 4.5 but that's how I feel about it, it's a great game!

I find it wasier to give an overall rating that each element, perhaps when I more experienced...