Marines Goodies - Treadmill

Another one from Marine, intended to be reviewed much earlier. ah the joys of RL. This one is Gord inspired as well!

Appearance

  Its a nice little treadmill, and unlike the mousewheel, can be kept in open view without bringing suspicious glares down upon you. It has all five. walks from the mousewheel, plus a new one called Puppy, that has you crawling along on all fours. As you'd expect, all the animations are well done, and of course the actual treadmill itself is well made, right down to its anims.

  Like the mousewheel again, it has ten different colours, plus custom, to allow it to fit any theme you like. Certain poses also set up a frame around it, with a harness to help hold the sub up. Naturally. All of it is well put together.

  One issue - on the latest firestorm you can't use height offset anymore, and the hover option in edit shape is too clunky to adjust on the fly, so if you end up hovering above the tread, or somehow under it, then you can't do much. Marine will likely address this issue as and when we get a definite removal of height offset altogether, as other viewers sitll support it.

Function

  This thing works pretty much identically to the Mousewheel. Hitch and unhitch to force sit/stand, config to change which walk anim, Maintenance to do.. well maintenance, such as updates, adjusting access, etc.

  It also carries the zapper, which works the same. Captor sets up a speed the sub must go at, if they go too slow, then zap.Curiously, also like the mousewheel, you still need to manually walk. I know why you do, but on a treadmill, well those things usually move themselves do they not, forcing you along with them?

  On that subject. It, like the wheel again, can be used to power lights. An army of subs in wheels and on treadmills powering your household is of course possible. Whether they are willing or not is, of course, up to you.

  Lastly it has the distance counter, same as the wheel again, it tracks how far the sub has gone. Combine it with the zapper, and you can force them to go very long distances indeed.

Closing thoughts

 As promised, no scores. Whats the point after all, if people just stare at numbers without actually knowing what the item does?

 I like this, though it is very similar to the mousewheel. By no means a bad thing, and of course, its copy/mod, so you can lay plenty out, and its a good investment for sim owners, or people who have lots of sub friends they want to manipulate into powering their house.

 So.. the good? Simple to use, responsive. looks good, not that expensive
 The bad? If you're on firestorm, floating/sinking issues, if you have someone constantly changing config, then folder spam.
 The.. Neutral? Very similar to mousewheel, down to you if you want both, or one or the other.

Oh, and its 500 linden.

As a minor addon - those boots in the last pic are KDCs new pony boots. They don't have any locking or restraints, so naturally I can't review em, btu they look good, so mentioning them regardless.

The big 100

      Yeah its not the biggest milestone, but when you look at it from my point of view, its still an accomplishment.

      So, lets see where things have come from, and where they are going.. Expect a long read, possibly a lot of rambling. I'm not used to writing like this.

Where it all began

      I started back in September 2011, with plans to do a review every day till I had covered every restraint I owned. Hah, that went down the drain fast. Turned out writing was a lot harder than I thought. All I wanted to do though, was inform people of the gear in SL, and how it worked.

      If you look back though, the changes are quite apparent. My writing improved, and became more subjective as well. I adopted a new format to make things clearer by separating the Appearance and Functionality of the devices, started using more fancy photo techniques (seriously, go look at the pics on my first review, then the ones on a more recent shoot), and of course dropped the pricing score a few months back due to it being too differing for each person that would buy it. I can rate looks and functionality, but ultimately its down to the individual to decide if the price is good after all.

      Quite a lot has changed on the outside as well. I quite often chat with other reviewers, the people who create the gear i write about, and unfortunately the spammers as well. God, they never shut up. But I suppose the bad comes with the good. Views are way up, the blog is more widely advertised, and if it wasn't for a gear shortage, I'd probably be able to get reviews out on a daily basis now. Well, maybe nearly.

The old and the new

      Naturally I am going back over older reviews now and trying to decide just how far I should go with updating them. So many have being updated that the old ones are severely out of date, and inaccurate, and that bothers me. As I said in the latest review, I want to drop scores altogether, as they just don't give the right impression.

      The point of this blog was always to inform others of what gear is out there and what it can do. Many just skip to the bottom and read what numbers I associated with them without actually reading what it does, how it works, or even what it actually looks like outside of the pics. This is a problem. I'm currently considering putting a TL;DR (too long; didn't read) section in where the scores are now, covering the good and bad in a much shorter format, naturally keeping the rest of the review the same as it is now.

       Oh, and the new banner up top that appeared a little while back? That's courtesy of Shay Finchy. She did a great job on it.

Honesty

      The one thing I will pride myself on though, is that I will still be brutally honest. If something is wrong with an item, I *will* state it. the 20 second delay on sensations gag, the ridiculous DLC system of the T&T belt, the issues with the stretching on AItechs mermaid, the giant bust on the Gimp doll by Amelie Barbour (though the last two are fixed now), this stuff needs to be pointed out, and never glossed over. I've seen some gear out there lately that are just atrocious, yet has had issues ignored or pushed aside by a fair few I've spoken to about them. I want to fix this.

      As you might expect, this can be difficult. Some gear that I don't want, but has the aforementioned issues, is probably being bought out of sheer ignorance. I want to try and help fix that, but well, funds are short. We'll see. Naturally most creators don't send me gear still, probably in case I bash it to the ground and give it a bad advertisement.

      Other things people have noted and asked me about repeatedly, is my stance on OC scripted gear and gear using Dari Haus gear as a base. I will not review these things. Why? Because 50% of the work is already done. I will not give people credit for using others work. Long story short? If you use OC scripts, or Dari sculpts (or dari scripts), I will not review it, even if sent to me.

      As things progress, hopefully we'll see less of the above, and more originality. I know there's a limit to what can be done, only so many differences a ball gag can have for example, but you can always tell when effort has being put in.

      Oh and that ad on the side for the Little Shop of Kink? Yeah, I put that there cause I wanted to, not because I'm a sellout thank you. I get a lot of questions asking where i buy gear, and this was the easiest way to show it.

Going forwards

      Expect more reviews, with me being more blunt. I may end up blacklisted by some creators, but so be it, the people reading this deserve to know if something they want to buy is crap, good, has a few bugs, etc.

      I'll try and get rid of the long delays between reviews, but that's easier said than done based on A) whats actually available, B) my RL situation, C) what I actually can get ahold of. Expect two more reviews by next Sunday though, I should have the items needed for that at least.

In Closing

      Well that's a long rambling mess, but i hope those that bother to read it enjoy it, and look forwards to the reviews to come. Thanks for reading, expect more of my usual again soon.

      The photos you see in this are showcasing some of my most used/favourite releases since I started the blog. Enjoy!

TK lifestyles Colourable Panel gag

Okay, technically its colorable panel gag, but I'm British, we actually spell it properly over here.

Appearance

 So.. its made using normal prims, not Mesh. And there's a lot of them. This means if you need to resize it to fit, expect to have a lot of little fiddly prism to adjust. Fitting this to my head was rather difficult as a result.

 The design appears to be based on Dari's old panel gag, with some adjustments of course, and all new build. As the name suggests, you can change its colour. In the colour (color) menu, you can choose which part you want to adjust (of which there are either), or choose to do the whole lot. It has some unusual colour schemes, and has 34 colours built in for the bulk of the gag, while the metallic prims have 8. The prims are also mod, so you can freely recolour that way as well. Just make sure it set it to white first. You can also add shine this way.

Function

 This ones party piece is that it scans other RLV restrictions beforehand. So if you for whatever hand have two gags on, only one set of garble will appear. If you are stuck only able to whisper, the gag will also whisper, etc.
 
 As always, the top left to bottom right method. First option is lock, really self explanatory. Locking this one does not really change the menus from what I can see. Second option is the always useful timelock, which frankly should always be included in gear these days. there is no excuse not to. This timelock can be quite extreme, you can add a minimum of 5 minutes, and a max of 28 days at once.

 Hide gag is next, a handy one for people who like to play without their restraints always appearing. Very handy for RP and those that want more interaction I find (or just prefer to be subtle?). Expose follows, pretty much opening you up for kidnap by anyone. Be careful in public sims with it of course.

 Options.. In here we have two IM related options. Full out block, which should be banned, and Wait. Wait means others have to IM you first. While better, I have heard stories from friends who have fallen out over this one, each one thinking they are being ignored by the other, so be careful with it.

 Also in the options menu we have Severity (how strict the gag is), which has the four usual. each one stricter than the last, with the fourth completely silencing you. There's a penalty option, for speaking while gagged. Adds to the timelock, with a max of 60 minutes being penalised.

 The Drool menu is a bit different, giving you an input box to adjust how rapidly drool flows from the gag. 0 stops it. I'm not sure what the upper limit is, but I tried 99999 and it went a bit nuts. Lastly in this menu is colour (color), which is covered above.

 We have owner next, back in the main menu. Its fairly simple. Add one, remove one, and list em. You can adjust the text command prefix, (default is /61<initials>menu. I.E /61awmenu. You can also do /61*menu, which will make EVERY sub nearby wearing the gag have their menu pop up for you. Lastly is Name, what you put in here will be displayed when you try to talk while gagged.

Scores

NOTE - I may be dropping these soon, they feel kind of unneeded. The point of these reviews is to tell people what the gear can do and what it looks like, not put a static number to it. If you want me to keep them, then TELL ME. If no one protests, then the scores can go as far as I am concerned.

Appearance - 7/10
Function - 7/10
Price - 349 linden

Amelie Barbour - Big Ball Gown

A new piece from Amelie. This one is not out at the time of this review, so subject to change of course.

Appearance

I do not know where to even begin with this. Its very.. Unique. Inflation/balloon bondage lovers will probably like it though. Its a huge rubber dress, with the skirt design being.. Interesting. The faces around the edge almost make it look like some subs are sealed within. When inflated, well the bottom balloons out, forcing the wearer up into the air, unable to move. There's some animations included, such as a wobble. You can also rock back and forth in various directions using your movement keys.

There's 12 colour sets. 6 hard, 6 soft. The top is quite bulky (presumably thick rubber?), and certainly will make most people seem to have a far larger bust I imagine.

I.. I'm just gonna leave this one up to those that read it, its too far out of my field for me to accurately comment on.

Function

Uses Amelies usual lock system. Anyone or single key. Anyone means everyone bar the wearer, single key means the key holder (can be the wearer). Once the choice is mad,e you can choose to Inflate, adjust the appearance or Leave it be.

Once inflated, you get access to the main options. Specifically Don't Free (closes menu), Wobble (makes you rock around), Turn left/turn right (does what it says on the tin), Free (duh), Appearance and Timer. Being inflated also restricts far touch, TP (others can summon you still), fly, locks the alpha layer and touch other.

And that's it for the functionality

Scores

Appearance - I can't rate this.. Its out of my ballpark. (no pun intended)
Function - Basic, nothing special, but nothing missing either. It works - 6/10

Price - Tentatively 795, subject to change by release.