RF "Stealth gag" (Mouth corset)

Another new one from RF, and one that has being oddly missing until now

Appearance

In terms of design, its as expected for a mouth corset. A high long collar, extending down to the bottom of the neck, and up over the mouth, very snugly. It has a variety of latex and leather textures for the main panels, and some metal ones as well. Ten for latex and leather, four for metal.

You can hide the rivets at the front as well. Katie mentions her reasoning for this pretty well. With the rivets on, it pretty much states there's a pear gag attached to the covering. Without.. You can pretend its whatever you like. Ball. Panties, inflatable, etc.

One issue i had is with the alpha, and my camera at its typical angle, I can see a through myself due to the gag not being tight against my face enough. Fortunately the alpha is not required, and with it off the gag doesn't clip me at all. Hopefully this is the same for anyone else who has the alpha issue.

The style menu allows use to hide/show the metal, as well as adjust textures for Lacing, D-Rings, Chains, the Cover, the Gag Plug and the Rivets  The odd bit here is the gag plug isn't even visible unless you cam inside your head..

If/when you use the leash option, the leash comes out of the middle of the gag, right where your mouth should be.

On a side note and completely unimportant note, the gag seems to fit the KaS catsuit(size XS at least) near perfectly.



Function

This is pretty much identical to the Scolds Bridle, without the blindfold or earmuffs and of course the style options that go with them. Same gag levels, same gag options, same renamer, etc.

The only other option I could find that was different/new is the option to turn auto alpha usage (via RLV folder) on and off.

EDIT: I just discovered that this thing, like the AiTech gag, can muffle emotes using its built in renamer. I.E an emote that is Aria yells "Help!" would come out as  Aria yells "Wewk!" When set to Garble. This may sound familiar. The AiTech 'best gag in SL' has this system as well.. Making it no longer unique to them.

Scores

Appearance - Unique in SL.. bar maybe MBs, but that one is very bad in comparison - 9/10
Function - 9/10
Price - 275 linden

RF Scolds Bridle

Newish gag from RF!

Appearance

First off, its made of metal, so those wanting a nice skintight leather/latex/etc gag  will want to look at something more like Katies Mask gag instead.

So starting with the actual bridle.. With the gag, its a metal harness around your head, with the gag riveted via a plate to the harness in the front. A small d-ring hangs from the gag plug, presumably for leashing purposes the sub around. The plug cannot be removed, so no open mouth option.There's also another D-ring on top of the harness.

The blindfold can be worn separately from the harness/gag, though the rivets look a little odd on the front if the harness is not under them. You can also add metal earmuffs, to block out sound.

For customisation, you can freely recolour/texture five different parts, or the whole lot at once. There's four metal types, Iron, Rust, Silver and Gold, with varying degrees of shine you can apply. There's also a default button for changing back to normal

Function

To start with you have the Plugin menu, this contains Katies usual plugins. Next we have style, covered above. Then we have Sign. Sign I like. Its pretty much sign language, albeit very simple. You can choose from 17 different options and you will do a gesture depending. be it a wave, pointing to something, etc.

You can turn RLV off with the next button, and access the Settings via the following one. Settings is the usual. Expose/update/get items, etc. Following that is a leash which can be applied to either of the D-rings mentioned in the Appearance section

Next is Take Keys, which is obvious and moves some buttons around - will get back to that shortly. The following two menus are Restraints, and Lock/unlock. The latter is obvious and needs nothing mentioned. The restraints its split into three areas. Gag, blindfold and Earmuffs. The Gag has 6 settings for mumbling, as well as adjustable channel, various RLV restrictions you can adjust and a renamer for good measure.

The blindfold is simpler, three settings. Faux lets you see still, though does take away map privileges. Half makes the screen blurry, and full obviously blinds you. Earmuffs are in the same vein, faux, half and full. Half blocks names and I think distance, while full obviously makes it impossible to hear anything. Back in the main menu, below each of the submenus for adjusting the restraints is a Remove button for its respective piece (gag/blindfold/earmuffs) and lastly an option to UnAll.(actual spelling)

Once locked, the menus shift around. Sign becomes the first option, leash becomes second, etc, and Timelock appears. Timelock is split into your typical Timelock for releasing once it ends, and Timebound which merely removes the restrictions while leaving the device locked on.

Scores

Appearance - Metallic so not my area of expertise.. It looks good though - 7/10
Function - Plenty of options here - 9/10
Price -  400 Linden

Side note

Those curious about my outfit here that you can see the top of - KaS just released a new mesh catsuit. Go pick it up if you want mesh shiny goodness

AiTech - Shiniez mermaid suit

A tribute item tonight! Everyone should know Shiniez by now, his art and storyline is legendary.

Appearance

This is based on the mermaid seen HERE and in terms of design, is accurate. Rigged mesh, so very easy to fit, and of to be honest it looks damn good. If I was rating this on just the looks alone? Would be 10/10 in an instant. However I'm not..

In terms of recolouring, it has a good selection. 18 colours, with 3 different areas re colourable (base, trim and belts). My pics show the default and my usual combo of black/red as examples.

Then we get to the bad. It has NO built in AO and suggest using a normal mermaid AO. This strikes me as an issue for what is meant for a realistic bondage RP mermaid suit.. Int his suit, you should be forced to crawl along the floor for example, not float in the air. And it has a ton of issues with a few AOs as well, the lacing often getting messed up or the material stretching. At the very least it should force my feet together at all times.



So to put it quickly. It looks amazing, but the lack of built in AO (especially for the price) hurts it severely in my eyes, which is a shame. Shiniez designs deserve at least a basic bondagey mermaid AO.

Function

This thing is VERY basic. You can turn on/off RLV, turn on/off running, touching and flying, as well as enable a slow mo which as it suggest, makes you move much slower and set it to quiet, which just lets the bound one and her captor get the messages from the suit.

Otherwise you can toggle it between 3 locking types. Anyone, single key and no one.

This doesn't need fancy commands and such I admit, but again it just feels like something is missing.. Probably due to the lack of AO again. This review feels too short as well.

Closing thoughts

I think its obvious what I'm gonna say. Give it a built in AO! At the very least force the feet together, and give us RPers who want to be bondage mermaids the options for more realistic play such as well, being forced to crawl in it, not float using a third party AO.

Scores

Appearance - Would be 10/10 but for the stretching issues caused by lack of AO - 8/10
Function - Extremely basic - 7/10
Price - 900 Linden. Now I;d say this is worth it for a shiniez lover. But for the love of god get a good AO first, else the stretching destroys the look.. - 5/10 (liable to change if the creator listens!)

Extra

Right now this review seems both short and harsh to me. But I love shiniez art, like many, and honestly was annoyed at how they felt just leaving out an AO seemed appropriate. I'll likely update this if/when an update to the restraint is released, if only cause I want this one to succeed so badly.

TL;DR

Amazing looks. basic function. Basic funciton I'm more than happy to live with. Lack of built in AO hurts it so badly that I almost didn't post this review.

RR - Siren Ropes

Finally got around to these. Reason it took me so long will be explained in post.

Appearance

Nice and snug ropes, as expected. Thin cord as opposed to the thicker used by her previous rope set which is a nice difference, and mesh of course that *should* make resizing easier. More on this later.

Its Marine, so you already know that the textures are gonna be good. 20 built in Textures, the ability to tint it as you see like and even adjust the material between 7 presets. Adjusting the material does not change the texture so much as it changes the colour and shine settings, so for the latex ropes to look best, you want some pretty high lighting settings and good windlight.

Now for the bad side. These ropes are the single hardest thing to fit in SL I have ever used. Take the leg ropes (noticeable in the hogtie one especially),there's a big gap between my legs and the rope at the bottom. However if I try to make it tighter at the bottom, it starts to clip at the top. And that's just the start. There is a pose in the arms, Over Head, that nearly everyone I know cannot get to fit right. Its mostly due to arm length being too long or short from what I can tell. This one is being fixed I believe, but then you come to straitjacket and well..

Lets just say fitting these takes time. Plus some viewers still have a bug that makes them crash to desktop when editing mesh occasionally to make it doubly annoying.

Function

Thankfully the frustration of fitting does pay off. 8 base poses as opposed to the usual 6 for both arms and legs, plus add in the anim hud (get it under plugins > anims) gives a ton of extra poses. Furthermore you can even adjust how your legs and arms are for sitting in the latest huds Marine has included a tutorial on how to do this on her own blog - read it here

The legs have quite a few less plugins than the arms, but include handy ones like RL time, autotie, leash, and a handy one for tying the subs shoes on via a rope that curls under the heels. Realkey is not included, but anyone can untie after awhile like the shibari ropes.

The style menu allows certain poses to change certain parts of the ropes. For example Style 1 of hobble has my knees tied and a rope going from ankle to ankle somewhat loosely to allow me to shuffle. Hit Style 2, and that ankle rope disappears. For the legs, you can also show/hide the crotchrope and a certain.. accessory that goes with it.

The Arms plugins are a bit more varied. Allowing touch restrictions, RLV folder access, unwearing, and so on.

Style for arms allows you to show a snug rope harness around your upper body. Like the leg ropes, some poses have multiple styles. Supertight for example hides some elbow ropes when on style 2, while style 1 has your arms even more cocooned.

Otherwise its similar to most of marines toys, a tried and tested setup that does the job.

Closing thoughts

These ropes are great, and new set is always nice. The resizing is a BITCH though. Usually I have no problem with mesh gear, but these were harder even than some of the gear that has about 30 prims per piece. I suppose my shape is a tad slim for these.

Functionally they work great. You Can find the two extra poses on the More.. page, as the first page has no room for extra buttons. Thanks to the style menu, there's plenty of variation as well.

Now if we just had tape restraints in this vein, my SL collection might finally be complete.

They cost 1000 Linden

Scores

Quality - 7/10
Function - 9/10
Price - 8/10

RF Mittens V2

New review.. Lot of RL stuff going on lately so had to slow down big time.

RF has released a new set of mittens, pure mesh this time. Being awhile since I did anything of theirs

Appearance

Now first off, my previous review still stands in many ways, but in terms of options? Lots more.

It has 10 different mitt styles this time, combined with wrist or sleeve/opera options that equal 20 different looks for the mittens, and of course recolouring is there as well. Some of the new mitts are a bit.. Well if you're not into Amputee, you may not want to use them.

The designs are as follows - Dildo, Doll, Hook, Nubby for the more.. amputee options, Then you have straight (the original look), ball, paw, hoof and fist, fist being the original folded over. Katie also said that this new setup allows her to add new designs of mittens very easily. Ball and hoof are featured in the pictures.

Its worth noting that the Doll Mittens are NOT inflatable/ball, but a sort of pouch with a hole going through it that shows no hand is within.. or a hole has being cut through the hand.

The cuff design has changed as well, to thinner more slender cuffs as opposed to the wide thicker looking ones the previous set used. These can also be shown or hidden as you like.

The sleeves this time are built into it completely, so just need to be hidden or shown instead of attaching a whole different set of restraints. All in all some nice changes, if questionable for some people.

The bad? Well they don;t seem as tight this time.. Before they seemed snug to my wrists/upper arms, now theres a noticeable gap which is annoying to say the least. Its somewhat visible in the two images showing the mitts off, and I posted another one specifically showing the issue. The recolouring is I believe the same as the originals, leather and latex textures in various colours. Otherwise everything else is the same.

Function

Not a lot has changed here.  The escape mini-game is still there, similarly the mitts will lock you out if you mitten yourself without taking the keys first. Top left to bottom right menu wise you have style, done in the usual RF style, followed by the plugins page. Most of the plugins are RFs usual ones, and of course the RLV menu giving folder access, restrictions, etc is here as well.

The Touch Object menu is next. In it it lets you choose three options to try and touch an object near you (thats touchable of course.). You can change it to publicly announce your attempts, or be silent as well.

Following this is the RLV On/Off button, and then the settings menu, from which you can turn on Expose, Verbose, get the leash holders, help NC and update of course. The Keys menu is as expected, if keys are hanging, then you can just take them, then of course give them away if you so desire.. or give them to someone else if you are the captor.

Under restraints you can of course bind your captive, the same 6 poses as the previous set I believe. You can also hide or show the sleeves here, and change the mitten type. Makes sense really, its the captor who decides what to pull on you (or chop off you.. ). Lastly there is Sub Anims, which has 39 anims in it now, up from the previous 24 of the previous set.

Once the keys are taken, some menus change location and some new appear. Timelock for example shows up, and its self explanatory by now, lock appears, and the keys menu gets fleshed out to include the masterkey options, give keys, etc.

Closing thoughts

A nice update, new mitten types are nice, though some do both me and will be blacklisted. Katies explanation for releasing as a new product and not an update makes sense as well, and the original are now lowered to 200 linden in price, while these new ones are 500


Appearance - New looks are nice. Looser sleeves/mitts are not, score remains unchanged - 9/10
Function - Exactly the same as the previous set, and I gave them 10 so.. - 10/10
Price - 500, an increase over the previous set, though it does bring more looks to the table - 8/10

AiTech Universal Gag

This gag claims to be the best in SL.. Quite a statement.

Appearance

Now then.. lets see.  Its mesh, always a nice start. This one was a tad annoying to fit for me, possibly due to my head shape. I had to rotate and resize quite a bit to get it to fit right.which was somewhat of a pain.
This gag advertises as 6 different gags, but I only could find 3 with two appearance settings each. I'm not sure that counts as 6 different, but there we go.

You get Ball, Bit and Ring, in the normal single strap around head style, and the head harness style. The bit i had some issues getting to fit right, as the gag seems to open wide to fit the ball and ring, but stays that wide even when bit is selected, despite it not being large enough to force the jaw apart that far. Thankfully from afar this isn't too noticeable.

My primary gripe is the lack of colour options. You can't adjust any of them at all.

Function

Lets get started.. First up, if you want the gag to work You need to wear a HuD attachment. This attachment will garble you even if you take off the gag while the HuD is still on, which I hope is an unintended bug.

The first option takes you to an Owner menu. Inside you Can of course Add and list any owners you currently have, and remove if there is one currently set. The next options allow you to adjust how heavily you drool, and how heavy the garbling is. Garbling of course can be set to heavy and still not block chat without that HuD attachment.

The Next row has Exposed (obvious), the option to turn Drool on, and the option to turn Garbling on. On the bottom and last row of this page, we have Lock, which takes you to a submenu that lets you lock the gag, or setup the timer. Then you get the Settings menu

In here you can turn RLV on and off, and set the name the built in renamer uses for garbling. Last you can access another submenu to adjust gag type. Ball, bit and ring, plus the option to show a head harness.

This gags selling point, to me, is the emote garbler. With the HuD in place and garbling turned on, you can do a emote such as '/me wanders up to someone and says "Hello" to them' and it would garble the hello as if you were speaking normally instead of emoting. A very nice touch.

Verdict

My take on it? Its a good gag, it has a great emote system as well, allowing for the garbling of text in quotation marks.

However.. We need a hud for the gag to work, which I can't understand. It advertises 6 different gags, when its 3 in two styles each, which is not the same. And it claims to be the best in SL and it just.. isn't. Its good, but the best? Not a chance.

Scores

Appearance - It looks good, and does have a decent set of options, but lack of colours hurts it  - 7/10
Function - The emote altering is very well done. Otherwise? Nothing unusual - 8/10
Price - 600 linden for 3 gags in two styles. Not a bad deal - 7/10

DEM renamer

A simpler review than normal tonight, only one category to fill out due to this being well.. a renamer, not a visual piece.

Function

So.. lets get started. To access it you need to type your initials followed by menu in channel 19, I.E for me it is /19 awmenu. For newer avatars with only one name, its whatever your first initial is, say E, followed by R for resident, so /19 ermenu. This prefix CAN be changed.

The top left option is lock/unlock, as you'd expect. Only an owner can do this however. Then you have titler. When in this, hit Set title to open a small textbox which you type your floating text title into simply put. You can hit enter for multi-line ones. You can also adjust its colour using RGB values, or type in a pre-set colour name. A list of pre-sets should be included with the device. Then you have hide/show the title, Self hide, a handy little option to hide it on the wearer screen, also allowing for owners to title their captives/subs without letting them know what it is.

Evil/normal mode is next. Normal is just a static title, the kind you get from most titlers. Evil mode periodically announces to people nearby in local that your title needs changed and gives them the channel address to do it in. As far as I know, its based somewhat on an older titler, also made by the maker of this product. It also has the detach alarm, for people not using RLV I suppose. Should the alarm go off, a Clear option appears as well, which turns the alarm off.

Then we get to the namesake, the renamer. The first option, as expected, lets you set what name it uses, simple enough. The next one however allows you to change words, making it impossible for the wearer to use certain ones. For a simple example, you could change No to come out as Yes, and other such things that could lead to very awkward and/or evil situations for the poor sub.

Next option is merely on/off, simple enough. You can then hit Self Off/On. This one forces any I, myself, me, and other such things to come out as the chosen name from before. For example, in my case, "I am myself" became "Aria am Aria". This also affects emotes.

Next we have owners, which is self explanatory, and lastly we have the prefix changer mentioned at the start. Hitting these makes a text box appear again, and merely type in what needs to be used on channel 19 to access your renamer. What you set is case sensitive, so be careful of capitals, and must be followed by menu. So for example if I change mine to Aria, it would be /19 Ariamenu. /19 ariamenu or /19 aria will NOT work.

Score

Function - This thing pretty interested, and the word changer could prove to have some really great utility for play, especially if you don't tell the sub a word has being changed. - 8/10
Price - 199 linden. Seems fair - 8/10