Orchard

Are you ready for the new male mesh body from SLink? Well, it’s here! As some of you may know, I’ve been searching high and low for a good mesh body for my boy av, and now it looks like I finally have it. Or have I?

Before I start off, I want to give a shoutout to both my close friends who tried this on with me, as well as the Convergence City roleplay group for discussing this with me in their out-of-character chat area. Their thoughts definitely influenced what I’m writing now! I always like to get other people’s opinions and have discussions about things before I give a final verdict.

What did I compare this to in considering the SLink Male Physique for purchase? Mainly, the TMP male body and the Aesthetic by Niramyth. For reference, I snagged the TMP body to try on after my awful experience with the Jomo male body, which turned out to be a suspected rip. I have two male friends who own the Aesthetic, one who came with me to SLink’s store to examine the demo.

Now, one to the review!

Essentials

The SLink Physique Male comes with a mesh body (no hands or feet) for 1250L. If you don’t have feet and hands already, take about 2400L to the store with you so you can pick up everything at once. The mesh body will include underwear, one pair of jeans, and one tank top. If you don’t like the basic skins you start off with for your mesh body, there are neck blenders provided to help with skin-matching.

Technical/Observations

• The Physique Male includes a penis. Yes, really! There’s even a foreskin option and pubic hair. The penis doesn’t seem to be able to get erect; I believe it’s there for completion purposes, sort of like most vaginas on skins and mesh bodies are. At first I was weirded out by an SL peen that doesn’t do anything, but after a while, I got used to it.
• Your body will seem a little lean when you try it on, but it can bulk up nicely if you edit your shape. Will it get as muscular as the Aesthetic? I’ll talk about that in a moment.
• For script maniacs like me, you’ll be happy to know that with the male body, hands, my AO, and the alpha/clothing hud attached, I was only running 32 scripts. That’s awesome. Everyone in SL should always try to wear low-script items so they end up under a total count of 50 for their avatar. It not only improves your SL experience, but helps to decrease sim lag.

Room For Improvement?

I, for one, am not crazy about the clothing/alpha HUD design. I know it’s a lot to include to the clothing hud, and Siddean must have realized this because she created two size versions of the HUD (small and large) for those who have trouble seeing everything. But it took me a moment of wtf’ing to understand just what button did what. Afterwards, I figured things out. I just wish the UI were a bit more friendly.

I don’t know about you, but I like my men with some thigh. When I increased BoyCake’s thighs, I noticed some poses caused the underwear to clip (see pic above). I tried to find the correct button to HIDE his thighs in that area, but that took another ten minutes and then I gave up. My point–if you create underwear or clothing for the mesh body, I would include an auto-hide script for it. Kemono has that and so does Maitreya.

Is This The One?

Is Physique Male for you? That’s what you want to know, right? It’s been a long search for that one mesh body you can finally wear, won’t clip your damn clothing, won’t do this or that or make you unhappy or sorry you ever bought it. When I asked my friends about the Physique versus the Aesthetic, we both admitted we liked Aesthetic’s muscly body more, but only on certain avatars. Not everyone looks good with that much bulk, and not everyone looks good with TMP’s skinnier mesh body either.

Physique Male is that sort of happy medium between TMP and Aesthetic. You don’t spend too much for what you get, and you end up getting a lot. For me, that means it’s a body I’m sticking with! For good, hopefully.

You can teleport here to check out SLink Physique Male for yourself.

Notice: if you create products geared towards men and want me to review it, please send an NC/pack/etc to Aemeth Resident. I can’t make a promise that I’ll review everything, but I understand the struggle of finding men’s products out there so it’s worth helping out!