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: Titan’s Decree
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.
The Faces of Titanquisitor
Gary Smith is the Owner and Editor-in-Chief of Titanquisitor, and since it’s a one-man operation, he’s also the writer, editor, scheduler, social media guy, and the person who spends too long picking featured images. Most content runs under his real name, though he also writes under the PatriotPaine and Stinger aliases. He’s not trying to fool anyone. His all-time favorite game is Red Dead Redemption, though if his play time told the story, you’d think it was Destiny 2. Roll Tide!
PatriotPaine is Gary’s gaming pen name, built around his PSN handle. When the content calls for a more focused gaming voice — reviews, retro columns, hot takes on the industry — PatriotPaine is who shows up. He doesn’t hedge, doesn’t care about metacritic, and has no patience for games that forget they’re supposed to be fun. If a game is woke garbage dressed up as entertainment, he’ll say so. If it’s a hidden gem nobody talked about, he’ll say that too.
Stinger is Gary’s pro wrestling pen name, carried over from his days writing for Lords of Pain and NoDQ between 2004 and 2010. The name stayed because the voice never really changed — analytical, opinionated, and allergic to revisionist history. Stinger covers WWE, AEW, and anything else worth talking about in the world of professional wrestling. He’s been watching since the before The New Generation era felt recent and has the VHS collection to prove it. Anonymous by design. The work speaks for itself.
Every realm needs its guardians. Titan and Theia are ours. You’ll see them around the site — passing judgment on games and films, watching over the forums, and generally making sure the standard stays high. Consider them the mascots of everything this place stands for.
The Mascots of Titanquisitor
Titan is the Guardian of the Realm and the face of Titanquisitor. He’s been here since the beginning standing watch over every review, every guide, every decree handed down on this site. Now fully featured across all gaming content. Lawful Awesome by alignment, he takes the job seriously even when the games don’t deserve it. His weapon is The Decree. His weakness is bad sequels and woke reboots. His patience for both is running out.
Before there was a site there was a standard, and before there was a standard there was Titan. He did not choose to be the Guardian of the Realm so much as the role chose him; someone had to hold the line between entertainment worth your time and the corporate slop being passed off as culture, and Titan was not the kind of man who walked away from a post. He has stood watch over this realm since its founding, issued decrees that could not be appealed, and buried more bad sequels than he cares to count. He does not enjoy the woke reboots. He endures them. There is a difference, and the distinction matters to him greatly.
Theia is the Titaness of the Silver Screen and Titan’s counterpart in all things entertainment. Where Titan judges games, Theia judges films, and she judges them with the same unsparing honesty. Chaotic Honest by alignment, she has no time for franchise fatigue, lazy horror, or movies that mistake message for story. Her weapon is The Quill of Judgment. She also tends the garden, which keeps her grounded when Hollywood gets to be too much.
She arrived in the realm not long after Titan, drawn by the same conviction that stories matter and that bad ones deserve to be called out by name. Where Titan built his authority through force of will, Theia built hers through taste, a quality Hollywood has been testing for decades and failing to diminish. She and Titan are not siblings, not lovers, not rivals. They are something rarer: two people who agree on what quality looks like and have never had to explain it to each other. She tends her garden between screenings. It is the only thing she has found that requires no verdict.
Thalia is Theia’s younger sister and the goddess of mischief, and it shows. Where Titan issues decrees and Theia renders verdicts, Thalia just points and laughs, and she’s usually right to do so. She shows up wherever the entertainment industry is embarrassing itself across all three verticals, which these days keeps her very busy. Chaotic Correct by alignment, her weapon is The Reflected Truth, her weakness is taking the bait occasionally, and she considers that entirely worth it.
Nobody invited Thalia to the realm. She followed her sister and never left, which Theia will tell you is exactly on brand. She is younger, louder, less interested in rendering formal verdicts and more interested in holding up a mirror to the absurdity and watching people realize what they’re looking at. Titan tolerates her because she is usually correct. Theia loves her because she has no choice. Thalia has never once filed anything seriously in her life and has no plans to start. The woke gaming journalists and agenda-driven critics she has made her particular enemies would very much like her to go away. She finds this hilarious.
