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| Content Quantity: |
19/20 |
Content Quality: |
19/20 |
Updates: |
7/10 |
| Entertainment: |
13/15 |
Navigation & Design: |
7/10 |
Download: |
4/5 |
| Value for Money: |
14/15 |
Reviewer's Tilt: |
3/5 |
Total: |
86/100 |
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Site info help
Site info valid on date of review
| Pictures: |
?? photosets (too time consuming to count due to no separate photo section. Most movies from late 2007 and onwards appear to have several associated photosets)
(approx. 50-500+ photos per set)
~800-900 px resolution |
| Video: |
526 DVDs/3,037 scenes
MP4 (including a version for portable devices) and Streaming Flash formats available
Highest quality: MP4 1280x720, 2500 kbit
No DRM protection |
| Other: |
101 Behind the scenes videos
21 videos from various adult industry events |
| Pricing: |
1 month recurring: $29.95
12 months non-recurring: $129.95
2 day trial: $1 |
Pros & Highlights
+ Wicked Pictures is a very popular studio with a long history and numerous AVN awards on their mantlepiece... or whereever they have them on display, but the content here is nevertheless a bit tricky for me to properly evaluate.
If I try to look somewhat objectively at the many scenes I've checked out, I do feel that many of them can almost certainly be considered good or great (hell, if they weren't, at least in the minds of their many fans, I imagine the studio would have closed down years ago). However, few of them fit my personal tastes in porn, which for b/g porn often runs more along the lines of no-nonsense, straight to the point, hardcore anal/DP stuff, or alternatively blowjob/anal POV, than the seemingly often slightly more "soft" and stylished approach Wicked takes.
In style quite a lot of it actually reminds me a fair bit of the type of porn I used to watch in the 1990s. Not necessarily a bad thing, except for the much too frequent use of background music, but just rarely what I look for these days (as a sidenote it was actually a fun little nostalgia trip to check out some scenes I remember watching back in the 90s).
I also came across many scenes devoting several initial (and sometimes later) minutes to dialogue and story (however paperthin the latter usually is in porn). Again not something I personally care for at all in b/g porn, but I do tend to like it a lot in lesbian scenes where a sense of intimacy is extremely important to me.
And as for that lesbian content, I've grown extraordinarly picky in that department over the last few years, developing a low tolerance for most scenes that don't follow the recipe for slow and tender "genuine" lovemaking exemplifed by studios like Viv Thomas and a select few others. Four or five years ago, even less perhaps, I thoroughly enjoyed lesbian scenes from sites like 1 By Day, while I would almost have to be bribed to spend any significant amount of time watching their lesbian scenes these days.
I'm quite positive however that this doesn't mean that a very large segment of porn consumers won't enjoy it, just as I used to myself before I became a pretentious ass and developed a more "refined" taste. And something quite similar apply to the lesbian scenes from Wicked and their very blatant porn style.
Altogether this obviously made it rather difficult for me to decide on the Entertainment sub-score. For me nearly all of the Wicked Content I watched was only worth around a 10/15, give or take a point or two. But attempting a bit more objectivity, and following in line with the scores I usually give, I've settled for a 13/15.
+ Large movie collection, particularly for a single studio site. The tour page claims over 600 movies though, while I "only" counted 526 (26 pages of 20 DVDs, plus six on page 27), or 3,037 scenes.
One new DVD is added every week, which seems like a reasonable pace for one studio.
+ Most of the movies I checked from the last four years had several photosets available for online viewing and zip download. Some also have behind the scenes video clips (accessible both from main movie pages and in a seperate bonus section).
+ 720p HD downloads and streaming HD video available for movies dated after late 2007 (although they've settled for a 2500 kbit bitrate instead of the commonly used 4000 kbit for 720p online videos. It doesn't make a major difference in video sharpness though, and the videos looked perfectly fine on both my PC monitor and my new 51" 1080p plasma 3D TV).
Older movies are in 640x480 resolution (as letterboxed widescreen where relevant).
In addition to the typical individual scene downloads, DVDs can also be downloaded as a single file.
Cons
- Condoms, condoms, condoms almost everywhere. As much as I support and practice safe sex, porn is fantasy and I would rather not have condoms present in fantasy.
If an individual model wants to take that extra precaution (in addition to whatever requirements for regular medical check-ups and documention are currently in use in the adult industry) I'll most certainly respect that, but most of the models working for Wicked do so without that form of protection when they work for other studios.
- While the interface has a nice clean look with large scene and DVD cover images, and a large embedded player for video streaming alongside download options, I found myself sorely missing an option to browse content by niche/category.
Category tags, often plenty of them (arguably so many that they become nearly pointless), are actually listed for movies, but as plain text rather than links. You're limited to browse the very large movie archive by complete scene or movie lists (with "most viewed" and "most liked" the most you can do to try to filter results) or by model.
Not a deal breaking problem, but I do feel it's a pretty severe flaw that you can't filter the listings to include for instance just the lesbian, anal or whatever scenes. There are over 3,000 scenes here, category filtering should be mandatory. There's not even a basic search field to search for keywords instead.
I have however been informed that the plan is to implement category browsing and general interface improvements in the not too distant future. At the time of writing though it falls well short of the DVD site competition.
(Member area screenshots)
Click here to visit Wicked Pictures
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95+ Excellent
85-94 Very Good
75-84 Good
65-74 Acceptable
-64 Don't Bother
Full rating info here
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