Pain Gate

Upon my initial login, I think what impressed me most about Pain Gate was the awesome variety. Now, the bulk of this stuff would fall under the whipping fetish category, but there's plenty enough in the way of wild scenarios and additional methods to spice things up. There's 6 different categories or "gates," as they call them, altogether. The first one is dedicated soley to what they consider their top releases. The second is labeled "Your Favorites," but since it's already filled up with kinky videos, I'm going to assume by "you" they mean their members in general. The last 4 are the most intense, and include "extreme interrogations" and, my personal favorite, "History." The latter is loaded with really sadistic period pieces that include awesome costumes and medieval hardware.

As you can imagine, this makes room for a lot of wacky stuff. Sometimes the subbie is punished by a sadistic pimp-esque character, and other times she's just taken hostage by masked lunatics. Of course, they switch it up totally every now and again, using a Mistress instead of a master. Personally, that's not my thing, but if you're into it's definitely there. Me, I'm more into the male on female domination.

There's this one cat you'll see time and time again — and with good reason. I mean, you can tell right away that this is a man who loves his work. I was just watching one from their "extreme" channel where he was cutting up a rather attractive college gal's ass with a bull whip. Those bright red gashes(she's not even all that pale) are most certainly real, and so are those chilling gasps and screams ... as well as the moans of pure pleasure. He doesn't give a shit either way, though. "Go into position girl," he shouted, then proceeded to unleash on her sensitive back and ass. I wish I could convey the sheer perverse pleasure I heard in his voice as he said, "It looks so good," whilst admiring her, by that point, totally obliterated rear-end, but I just don't think it's possible.

Another big plus is that they've got an outstanding little stable of bitches. There's 74 in total, and they're a pretty diverse mix. In fact, the only pattern I could see is that they mostly seem to be of European descent and in their late-teens or early-twenties. So, if you're looking to see the more exotic types being tortured, this probably won't get your motor runnin'. Otherwise, I think you'll be quite satisfied.

While the model pages aren't exactly intricate, each girl does get a pretty nifty little bio which contains more useful info, despite the modest word count, than your standard full page of vital statistics, glamor shots, and inane hobbies. Instead, they decided to focus more on the girl's past. And that suits me just fine. Hey, I don't know about you, but a little backstory always makes the porn hotter for me. It's just nice to have them fleshed out as a real person, you know? Especially with this particular brand of smut. I mean, who doesn't want to see the girl-next-door type from the Midwest getting brutally tortured? Or the shy Czech hottie who has to wear a mask because of her very strict parents. On that note, you'd be surprised how much these little bios can delve into these hotties' potential motivations. One that really stuck out to me was the girl who came in because she felt she needed to be punished for treating her boyfriend so poorly.

Now, as great as all of that might sound, this site isn't without its share of flaws. And, as you know, I'm duty-bound to let you know all about this sucker — good, bad or indifferent. So, let's go slumming, shall we?

The photo galleries here aren't exactly high-res, and while you do get upwards of 200 well-shot images per gallery, it's hard to enjoy them when they're offered in such a low and inconsistent resolution options. Normally I wouldn't think much of it, but these are actually good looking photos. It seems like a waste to not offer them in an ultra-high resolution.

Sadly, the same issues arise in the video section of the site. The highest quality scene I've watched is a Windows Media file with a 720 x 576 resolution. Certainly a far cry from 1080p HD, but again, most B.D.S.M. sites, for whatever reason, have pretty mediocre video quality. And to make matters worse, there's even a little warning on the site that lets you know that each scene you downloaded is encoded with your information and that if that clip ends up floating around on the web somewhere, they will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. While I don't blame them a bit there, it's not exactly something you want floating around in your head when you're trying to relax and masturbate. Or perhaps that's a fetish?

On the flip-side, the scenes are surprisingly well lit for the genre, and when you run into one that's not split up into 8 different clips you can expect 18-25 minutes of pure bliss. And on a sidenote, I'm quite glad they avoided adding music to their films. The eerie silence -- save for gasps and screams -- only broken by the occasional cracking of the whip sure sets one hell of a ambience.

If the site has an Achilles' heel, I think it would have to be its layout. Where do I start? Well, those inconsistencies I talked about earlier aren't just limited to quality. Some photo sets, for instance, can't be downloaded; some can only be viewed on site. But hey, I can live with that. Good content is worth a little run around. What is unacceptable, however, is the total lack of date markings. Without timestamps it's hard to tell how often they update, and for that matter, those inconsistencies in quality might come down to a mix of older and newer updates. As is, though, I'd never know.