I’m Gary Smith. I run this place.
Titanquisitor is a gaming, entertainment, and pro wrestling site. That’s the short version. The longer version involves about fifteen years of history, a lost domain name, a failed experiment, and a stubbornness to just let the thing die.
Where It All Started
The site launched in April 2011 as The Vortex Effect. It was a blog. No grand strategy, no monetization plan. Just a guy who had been writing about wrestling on the Lords of Pain main page since 2010 (the forums since 2004) deciding he wanted his own space to cover games and movies too. The wrestling writing had been going on for years under the pen name Stinger. The blog was the natural next step.
At some point, the domain name slipped through my fingers. The site kept going under a new name, Vortainment, and stayed up and running until around 2021. A lot of the content from those years is still on the site if you go digging. Not all of it has aged perfectly, but it’s there.
In April 2022 I walked away from it. I’d convinced myself that what I needed was a fresh start with a proper new site, so I launched LootPlex. Put real money into it. Put real effort into it for about a year. It never gained any traction, never got properly indexed by Google, and never found an audience. Meanwhile the old blog I’d left for dead was still pulling more traffic than the one I was actively running.
So I shut LootPlex down and came home. In February 2024 I came back to the original site under a new name, Titanquisitor, and started picking things back up. It sat mostly quiet through 2024 while I figured out what I wanted to do with it. In February 2026, I relaunched it in earnest and it’s been updated steadily since.
The name, if you’re wondering, is a reference to two ARPGs I love: Titan Quest and Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor. It fits what I was and am trying to do now since the relaunch.
What the Site Is
Three things: gaming, entertainment, and pro wrestling. Those were the three things in 2011 and they’re still the three things now.
On the gaming side you get news, reviews, and the occasional column or guide. Reviews are mostly on the PS5 side of things because that’s what I play, but I cover whatever crosses my desk. On the entertainment side it’s primarily film reviews, with some TV when something’s worth talking about. Wrestling content runs under the Stinger byline, a pen name I’ve been using since 2004 when I wrote for LOP, NoDQ and others. Gaming columns sometimes run under PatriotPaine, which is my PSN handle. Everything else is just Gary Smith.
I also have a few contributors occasionally. William (Jules) who submits movie reviews sometimes. Other contributors that you may see, or have content on the site, are Eric (Q), Brian (Sandman), and The Monkey. All used to be columnist or posters in the old LOP Forums.
Why This Site Exists
The internet used to be a more interesting place to read about the things you cared about. You’d find a site run by one person who was genuinely obsessed with something and wrote about it like they meant it. The writing had a point of view. It wasn’t optimized to death. It wasn’t trying to be everything to everyone.
That era got swallowed by corporate media, algorithm-chasing, and a cultural shift toward content that’s afraid of its own shadow. Sites got big, hired staff, and slowly became press release aggregators with scores attached. The personality drained out. The opinions got hedged until they meant nothing. Everything started sounding the same.
That’s not what this is. One person, one voice, no corporate filter, no political agenda. I’m not here to lecture you. I’m not here to make you feel a certain way about society. I’m here to talk about games, movies, and wrestling with people who actually like games, movies, and wrestling.
Who This Is For
If you’re somewhere between 25 and 50, grew up gaming, watched wrestling at some point (or still do), and like watching movies without someone telling you why you should feel guilty about it or needing a trigger warning, you’re probably the right reader for this.
The audience I’m writing for remembers when the internet was fun. When a review was a review and not a cultural statement. If mainstream gaming and entertainment media stopped feeling like it was talking to you, you might be in the right place.
The Star System
Reviews are scored on a one-to-five-star scale. Five stars is reserved for things that genuinely stick with you. One star means skip it entirely. Most things land somewhere in the middle because most things are in the middle. The score is context for the review, not a replacement for reading it.
Full breakdown is on the Review Guide page.
Ethics
I don’t take money in exchange for favorable coverage. If I receive a review copy of a game or anything else, I’ll note it in the review. Everything else I paid for out of pocket. I do run AdSense ads on the site for those without an adblocker (thank you), but I’m not making money here.
Full breakdown is on the Ethics Statement page.
Where to Find Me
Twitter/X: @Titanquisitor
YouTube: Titanquisitor on YouTube
Twitch: Titanquisitor on Twitch
Forums: The Vortex Effect Forums are open. If you want to argue about a review, talk wrestling, debate game rankings, or just hang out with people who remember what the internet used to feel like, that’s the place.