Naked Sword offers you a wealth of hot movies from over 100 studios, all in one place. It has been online since about 1997 and offers thousands of movies from studios such as Bel Ami and Treasure Island, Raging Stallion and even from sites rather than studios Corbin Fisher for example. The tour shows you some of the good variety that is on offer in the member area, the monthly sign-up price is available at a discount and over 17,000 scenes are offered. There are daily updates promised too.
Site Content
When you first leap into Naked Sword you find a home page crammed with images and announcements. All your content needs are taken care of right there with update news, what’s hot and who is new, what’s most watched and what’s currently being featured. The top menu directs you to what’s just added and what’s most watched and you can also find the Naked Sword originals there, or you can check out the Stars list or the Studios list; the menu is pretty straightforward.
The movies here are your classic hardcore gay adult videos: couples together, some groups or three-ways, solos and always good focus and lose-ups on the action with a cast of very varied guys. Lets start by taking a look at the numbers, just to show you how big a site this is and how good a deal a membership is. In the Naked Sword Original scenes area there were 187 scenes, some with top names such as Coby Keller and Marcus Mojo, and these were from in-house series, such as Golden Gate Solos. There were 38 full length, original DVDs, again with series to follow, and each was available to stream in a full length version. I counted over 140 NS stars and there were also backstage and behind the scenes videos to check out in this one area alone.
There are over 17,000 other scenes on the site and you are going to need a long-term membership to see them all. I would have liked to have found a list of all movies shown by date added, instead though we have to view them as what’s most watched or most recently added and it’s not that easy to navigate back in time as only a few index page link-numbers show at one time.
Movies are shown as streams at 960 x 540 and start as soon as you land on n a viewing page. This was at the default 720p resolution but recent movies also come with up to five other resolution choices including one right down at 160p, which should do for small phones. The other options are fine and the overall quality is good. You an stream in Flash or Html5, but there are no downloads to be had. Full screen is an option and videos played fine when at this size.
Checking out the studios, to give me an idea of the kind of content I might find when I started running a more detailed search, I found some top studio names including Bijou, Colt and Flava Works, so some smooth-twink movies, some bear and butch movies and some Latino and black movies, and that’s just from three studios. You’ve also got lesser known studios here and it was fun to check out some I’d never heard of and see what I got. The page simply shows you a list and not the number of movies, nor does it tell you what kind of films the studio might specialize in.
However, you can use the Themes link in the menu to find a category page with several themes or categories listed and you can always browse by Stars, using the model index. There were 165 guys listed here, obviously not every guy who appears on the site, and they came with some details and links to their videos.
Key Features / Navigation
I have to admit that I found navigation a bit of a pain at Naked Sword, it was like the site, the sword, is so big as to be unwieldy. I may have missed something but I didn’t see an easy way to list all videos in one easy to navigate set of pages though a lot of pages it would be for sure. I just wanted one link to show me all the videos arranged in the latest order so I could check updates going right back and also see more easily what was available. To be honest, I am not interested in what is most watched, I want to see what’s new okay so Just Added helps there but there were no upload dates that I could find and when you want to jump back through pages, you can only jump a few at a time.
There could be more info in the model index, and more models come to that. Id also like to see downloads, we can only stream here. You are able to add things to a playlist or a favorites area but I didn’t see any rates or comments facilities and there is not a lot of interactivity. There is good info about scenes, usually, and some detail on the DVDS as to who directed and so on, so there is some background. I didn’t find galleries and there are no extras, but there are several adverts dotted around which might be of interest, or annoyance. Although the site is big, I found the design could do with a makeover and upgrade to give us more interactivity and easier browsing.
A quick word about the discount. I have seen NS advertised for $39.95 per month, and have then seen it reduced to $29.95 per month. When I saw it just now they were asking only 15.11 per month. Note that my prices showed in euros, there will be regional variations, but even so, that’s a huge discount and around 50% off the usual monthly price. This will recur at 22.70 per month, still more than ten euros (or dollars) down from the usual cost and there are longer-term deals to consider too.
Overall Conclusion
There is no doubt about it, Naked Sword probably is one of the largest collections of varied gay hardcore on the net. There are over 18,000 movies with eight daily updates (so the site says). Navigation is a pain and I don’t like the adverts on the site, I would like to see a clearer design and something more up-to-date, as the pages do remind me of sites form the 1990s. But, for full on, good quality, varied, well-made movies that come in at a discount you get a good deal on a membership.
Pros & Cons
+ Big discount
+ Over 18,000 movies
+ Top stars
+ Top studios
+ Good quality
+ Some HD
– Poor navigation
– Cluttered design
– Adverts in member area
– Not always a lot of detail with vids or guys
