The Dink Network

Batch 1 Complete! Fanfare!

The Second Batch:

Beginning of Evil - CHECKED
Beginning of Sorrows - CHECKED
Belgotha Graphics - CHECKED
Bestiary - CHECKED
Between the Shadows - CHECKED
Beyond the Galaxy Intro - CHECKED (1 review removed)
Bill & Kill 1: *SIGH* - CHECKED
Bill & Kill 2: The Unknown Boy - CHECKED
Bill & Kill 3: The Terrible End - CHECKED
Birth of an Empire - CHECKED
Birth of an Empire Bug Fix - CHECKED
Bishop's Quest Part 1: Enter The Hero - unchecked
BlendTut - unchecked
Blood Scorpions - unchecked
Bloop the Fish - unchecked
Bloop the Fish 2 - unchecked
Bomb (The) - unchecked
Bonca Hunt (The) - unchecked
Boomerang - unchecked
Bug Mania - unchecked
Business - unchecked
Call to Greatness - unchecked
Cast Awakening Part 1: Initiation - CHECKED
Castle Fix - unchecked
Castle Killers - unchecked
Castle of Lore - unchecked
Catacombs (The) - unchecked
CEdit - unchecked
Cemetery Graphics Pack - unchecked
Chaos - unchecked
Chasin - CHECKED (1 review removed)
Cheat Menu - unchecked
Chests and Breakables - unchecked
Chickens! - unchecked
Chores - unchecked
Christiaan's Midi Pack - unchecked
Christmas Adventure: Search for Santa - unchecked
Chrome Status Bars - unchecked
Church of Red Dragon Introduction - unchecked
Cliff - unchecked
Cliff-water tiles - unchecked
Clock - unchecked
Cloud Castle - unchecked
Cloud Castle 2: Scarab - unchecked
CM2Pillbug - unchecked
Colored Dink - unchecked
Coloured Blood Pack 1 - unchecked
Commando Duck - unchecked
Computer Virus - unchecked
Cooltext - unchecked

Inspired by a recent thread about a certain review by a certain ex-dinknetwork netizen, I figured the reviews on this site could use a bit of looking back into. The idea is for someone to read through all the reviews that a certain file has, then report in this thread whether the file had any objectionable reviews or not. If no, the file will be marked as CHECKED. If yes, the Dink Network staff will re-evaluate the objectionable review (eventually at least ), possibly rejecting or changing the type of the review, after which it will be marked as CHECKED - no action taken, CHECKED - 1 review removed, or whatever.

The purpose of this Review Patrol is to improve the general quality of reviews on this site, not to badmouth the writers of the reviews, the fact that a poor review was approved in the first place, or even to get into prolonged debates about whether a certain review should exist or not. So please, try not to be too picky, and only point out stuff that is clearly bad. Feel free to check out as many or as few files at once as you want (don't spam by making several posts quickly in a row, though).

The first batch:

... His Ancestor 1239 - CHECKED
10 Sword Icons - CHECKED
16 Best Midi - CHECKED
374 Midis - CHECKED
9 Gems of Life (The) - CHECKED
9 Gems of Life 2 - CHECKED (2 reviews removed)
9 Gems of Life Part 2 Modification - CHECKED
A Day in the Life of Dink Smallwood - CHECKED
A Monstery Dimension - CHECKED
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ - CHECKED
Advanced Graphics Tutorial - CHECKED
Adventures of Dink Bigwood (The) - CHECKED
Adventures of Dink Smallwood Part 1: The Town of Rakuna - CHECKED
Adventures of Dink Smallwood Part 2: The Song of an Ancient Wind - CHECKED
Adventures of Ed the SCV (The) - CHECKED
Adventures with Jani - Part 1 - CHECKED
Afterimages - CHECKED
Agathain Sea Traders - CHECKED
Alliance Command - CHECKED
Alternative Heroes - CHECKED
Alternative Savebot - CHECKED
AmoebaLord's Custom Songs Midi Pack - CHECKED
An Aeophian Adventure: Dink goes to Aeophia - CHECKED
An Age Of Darkness - CHECKED
An introduction to DMOD making - CHECKED
Anarchy Halloween Party - CHECKED
Animated Heavy Portcullis 1.1 - CHECKED
Ants (The) - CHECKED
Apex - unsure
Applying Dink Palettes in GIMP - CHECKED (1 review removed)
Applying Dink Palletes - CHECKED
Apprentice (The) - CHECKED
Armour Demonstration - unsure
As Good As Eternity - CHECKED (1 review unfeatured)
As Good as Eternity Graphics Pack - CHECKED
As Good as Eternity Source - unsure
Attack of the Army (The) - CHECKED
Attack of the Evil Wizard (The) - CHECKED
Attack of the Goblins (The) - CHECKED
Attack of the Mutant Veggies - CHECKED (no action taken)
Autumn Tiles - CHECKED
Back from the Grave - CHECKED
Banana Weapon - CHECKED
Bane of the Magi - CHECKED
Bangerang Boomerang - CHECKED
Barbeque Flamethrower - CHECKED
Basic Enemy Shoot - CHECKED
Basilisk Smile (The) - CHECKED
Battlesys - CHECKED
Baywatch Isle - CHECKED

... His Ancestor 1239
is good.
10 Sword Icons
is good.
16 Best Midi
is good.
374 Midis
is good.
9 Gems of Life (The)
is good.
9 Gems of Life 2
Review by dutch2k - 0.3? stopped playing because of not getting past the first monster?
Review by Jveenhof - this isn't a review.
9 Gems of Life Part 2 Modification
doesn't have any reviews.

(I'll update the list later)

A Day in the Life of Dink Smallwood - ok
A Monstery Dimension - ok (though I haven't personally played it)
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ - Highly questionable, but classically so

Back from the Grave (demo) - Checked and Cleared, other than a questionable review by Joshriot Kidding!

One of the recent reviews I personally found very unfair was Yeoldetoast's review on WinDinkEdit Plus.

I agree with skull. It do fix bugs, like the hardness stamping bug which was really REALLY annoying. (It always took the hardness tile left of the one you actually clicked)

I knew this thread would turn into a bashing.

I am now in the process of editing my reviews.

The system works!

yeoldetoast's review may have been a bit too negative but it was a good thing to point out that it still has some bugs.

Hopefully someone will start developing a new version

Yea, accuracy of the claims aside (I've no idea, I'm not much of a windinkedit person), it's a good and well backed up review, even if it's a bit harsh.

Now, is anyone interested in weeding out more bad reviews?

I'm in the process of it right now; I'll have a list of reviews checked out once I've done a total of 10 more, from the bottom of the list up. 6 of the bottom read so far, 4 more to go (minus BFTG since I already checked it)

EDIT: There we go;

Attack of the Mutant Vegies - Checked, but with another Skorn review when he didn't finish the game again and mentioned that he cheated. Needs a second look by another Dinker.
Autumn Tiles - Checked
Banana Weapon - Checked
Bane of the Magi - Checked
Banana Boomerang - Checked
Barbeque Flamethrower - Checked
Basic Enemy Shoot - Checked
The Basilisk Smile - Checked
BattleSys - Checked
Baywatch Isle - Checked

Advanced Graphics Tutorial - checked
Adventures of Dink Bigwood (The) - checked
Adventures of Dink Smallwood Part 1: The Town of Rakuna - checked
Adventures of Dink Smallwood Part 2: The Song of an Ancient Wind - checked
Adventures of Ed the SCV (The) - checked
Adventures with Jani - Part 1 - checked
Afterimages - checked
Agathain Sea Traders - checked
Alliance Command - checked
Alternative Heroes - checked
Alternative Savebot - checked
AmoebaLord's Custom Songs Midi Pack - checked
An Aeophian Adventure: Dink goes to Aeophia - checked
An Age Of Darkness - checked
An introduction to DMOD making - checked
Anarchy Halloween Party - checked
Animated Heavy Portcullis 1.1 - checked
Ants (The) - checked

After playing through Attack of the Mutant Veggies, Skorn's review seems okay. I'm not sure how far he got, but the review sums up the whole dmod pretty well. If he didn't admit he didn't play through the whole thing, it would be okay, it would be a bit mean to reject it for having too much honesty...

GOOD WORK DINKERS!
Our first "Review Patrol Route" is almost completed; Only 11 more Dmods needing their reviews checked (12 if you include Attack of the Mutant Vegies, but I think scratcher's 2nd opinion is enough for me to say its CHECKED).

I assume the next batch of Dmod reviews to be checked will be posted some time this week when the remaining Dmods have been cleared, but I myself won't have time to clear them myself. I'll help with the next batch when I get some spare time though.

Let's keep up the good work!

Skorn's review on Mutant Veggies does NOT seem okay to me Story has no plot holes, though I didn't even see the whole story. No new graphics, but I didn't get very far. Enemies are too strong, even though it has two difficulty modes and even after cheating my strength to 1000 I couldn't put a dent into the enemies! (Which is a lie, I just checked, they have 5 defense).

And how is it even fair to give a d-mod a score so high when you couldn't even like it enough to continue trying to kill the veggies? Seriously, it's just another random review and it hurts the overall rating system, especially for newcomers to the community who only have scores to go from when deciding which d-mods to download.

I'll admit that when I was on staff, people did think I was too harsh on the reviews I denied

I agree. And Mutant Veggies does have edited graphics of the original ones. I mean, what other D-Mod has lettuce jumping around?

I assume the next batch of Dmod reviews to be checked will be posted some time this week when the remaining Dmods have been cleared, but I myself won't have time to clear them myself. I'll help with the next batch when I get some spare time though.

Yep. I'm not sure about doing the entire site (at least unless more than very few reviews pop up), but batch 2 will definitely come up once the first one is done.

Kyle: Well, it's definitely a borderline review, no way around that. I just figured it's good enough, I can totally relate with Skorn's points, I liked the dmod, but fighting the veggies did get pretty exhausting pretty fast (even on the easy difficulty).

The stuff about the enemies' defence isn't a lie, it's controlled with the &mydef variable, and that seems to be changed to your strength value on various screens, mostly the ones that you appear on when using the teleporter (so you might be able to "cheat" by arming fist whenever going to a new place, then changing to a stronger weapon).

The scores seem like the most objectionable part- 9/10 for graphics described as "bland", 8/10 for having a fitting title midi?

Any nails on the coffin, or redeeming factors?

You're right, the &mydef does get changed, my bad. I noticed it in the main.c but I checked some of the starter scripts and none changed it, so I assumed it was 5 (the default) for quite some time.

So far, none of Skorn's reviews that have been mentioned have been bad enough to pull down, IMO. You should have seen the ones we rejected outright.

His reviews are all factually inaccurate. In The Milli Vanilli game he thought that Fabrice Morvan was a girl...

I'm suprised there hasn't been any more reviews cleared, so I checked Apex. As far as I'm concerned it's CLEARED but has a lot of negative reviews. Second opinion appreciated once more, otherwise mark as Checked.

EDIT: I agree with Kyle.

Rakosy's review of Apex is barely even a comment, let alone a review. Take that one down imo.

dang, you are harsh. I think that review's above par... it explains with various examples why the game sucks, and there's no real contrast between the scores and the text (like in Skorn's review, for example).

Applying Dink Palettes in GIMP
Tullisti's review - Not a lot of reviewing going on. This is something that should have been in the description box, not in the reviews section. (Objections...?)
Applying Dink Palletes - CHECKED

I agree with you about Tullisti's review. He mentiones how good GIMP is and that he made a file about it. There aren't really any arguments why it is good or bad, just why he created it.

It is indeed more something for the description box.

Okay, further reviews checked:

The apprentice: CHECKED, cabootee's review is very short, but he does use a valid argument (just one though).
Armour Demonstration: UNSURE: Skorn's review is... Well he isn't really using any arguments to back up his claims. Especially because he gives the file a 9.9 I don't think this review is good enough.
As Good As Eternity: I have my doubts about Tyris' review. It's not unfair by any standard, but it is featured even though it doesn't have a lot of arguments about it, just explaination. Also I can't understand dinkmaster11's claim that it is 'one of the shortest dmods I ever played', it would suggest he didn't really play through it, still it doesn't seem grossly unfair.
As Good as Eternity Graphics Pack: CHECKED
As Good as Eternity Source: UNSURE Glennglenn's review is a bit... Well it isn't saying anything besides what I would know already before downloading. Iceman's review uses pretty much the same arguments, or rather lack thereof. I'd recommend both for removal.
Attack of the Army (The): CHECKED
Attack of the Evil Wizard (The): CHECKED
Attack of the Goblins (The): CHECKED

The apprentice: Yep, cabotee may well be the proud owner of the shortest review on the Dink Network. It's good for it's size.

Armour Demonstration: It's a silly review for sure... delete-worthy? If he had created a similar review with a 0.0 score, it would never get approved, so maybe this should go.

As Good As Eternity: About Tyrsis' review, I agree completely. dinkmaster11's review is weird and pretty nondescriptive (could apply the same exact review to many many other dmods), but yeah, not so bad as to be definitely reject-worthy.

As Good as Eternity Source: Certainly not the most descriptive of reviews... On the other hand, I guess there isn't all that much to say about a source pack. Still, reviews that anyone could write off-hand in two minutes are a bit icky.

Well, for a source code you could say what is good about it. For example are the scripts well commented, is there anything new to the scripts that makes them good for learning. Or are they hopelessly complicated and buggy, making them bad practice. At least you could say something more then: "The DMOD is good, now we have the source code which is extra good!"

See for example mimifish's review for that file for a good review about a source code.

I definitely hear you... I really can't decide if they should be deleted, though- I'll leave that at the discretion of someone else with the power.

Batch 2 is here, also.

Beginning of Evil: CHECKED
Beginning of Sorrows: This has a bit of the same problem that As good as eternity had, a featured review by the author that is... Mostly background information. It does have more review elements though, might need someone else to look at it.
Belgotha Graphics: UNSURE DaVince's review only says the graphics are cute... Sure you could say something more about it? It does provide an argument, but it's quite weak I think...
Bestiary: CHECKED GlennGlenn's review is borderline, but acceptable in my opinion.
Between the Shadows: CHECKED
Beyond the Galaxy Intro: UNSURE I think it's now pretty well known that tomsthebomb is a duplicate account of morpheus. So if he writes a review giving it an 8 and everybody else gives it a 3... Not entirely unbiased...
Bill & Kill 1: *SIGH*: UNSURE A borderline review by idontknow. The review is talking, but not really saying anything. Also, it is factually incorrect when mentioning the absence of a savemachine. (Though that could probably be forgiven)
Bill & Kill 2: The Unknown Boy: CHECKED
Bill & Kill 3: The Terrible End: CHECKED
Birth of an Empire: CHECKED
Birth of an Empire Bug Fix: CHECKED

Really difficult to judge many reviews a second time. I think that many of the reviews passed now wouldn't get passed if they would be submitted new. Ah, well... It's just about getting the really bad ones out.

Most of these are fine, but Gokussj's review of Chasin is quite unfair, and is more an attempt to tell people that drugs are bad mmmkay rather than reviewing the content of the game.

I have to admid, Goku's review of that is pretty awful and I don't think the game deserved that score, really.

Cast Awakening Part 1: Initiation - CHECKED. Even Skorn's review passes in my opinion, but then again, anyone with a second opinion can feel free to recheck anything. Although there certainly were a LOT of reviews.

Also: rename the subject title on this post to Patrol Two.

Well, I don't know about Gokussj6's review being that bad. The D-Mod sucked anyway.

It's one of the worst written reviews I have ever seen!

on each screen a hero do himself

Well that's something i never met at any d-mods before

There are far worse games with far better scores. If you're going to review something so low you have to have a reason for it. Derp.

There are far worse games

I disagree.

on each screen a hero do himself

I want to spare the review just for that line. Nah, review removed, it didn't have nearly good enough arguments to justify the score given.

tomsthebomb's review removed also... the rest aren't really good, but not horrible enough to be taken down, in my opinion.