Narcos (NetEnt): Review
And so it finally arrived at our doorstep. Close to a year and a
half after the grand 🗝 announcement at the London iGaming conference, Narcos, one of the
most anticipated branded titles, has finally left the production table 🗝 and rolled out
across all NetEnt casinos. Right off the bat, it becomes entirely clear to us why it
took 🗝 so long. To call Narcos an ambitious undertaking would be an understatement to say
the least. In NetEnt's take on 🗝 the American crime series Narcos, the drug-fueled drama
effectively expands its world into the online slot format where the traditional
🗝 boundaries between videogames and slots are becoming increasingly blurred.
Everything
our sources told us about Narcos, and which was exclusively reported 🗝 on our site,
turned out to be true. It does indeed come with a setup of 5 reels, 3-rows and 🗝 243 ways
to win. This is a great format and one that is actually a bit unusual for
NetEnt.
Unsurprisingly, there 🗝 are quite a few features to keep you busy here. In the
main game, you'll benefit from the Locked Up 🗝 feature which is a win-streak mini bonus,
capable of delivering quite decent wins. There's also the Drive-by feature where you'll
🗝 see bullets flying across the screen, randomly transforming high paying symbols into
wilds. Available both in the main game and 🗝 the free spins are the Walking Wilds,
similar to the feature that was made famous in Jack and the Beanstalk, 🗝 another popular
title from NetEnt. Finally, there is the big showdown - the Free Spins feature.
Frustratingly hard to trigger, 🗝 but the key necessary to unlock the true potential. You
can play it from between 0.20 and 400€ per spin 🗝 across all devices.
Produced by Gaumont
for web television company Netflix, the first two seasons of Narcos are based on
druglord 🗝 Pablo Escobar who became a dollar billionaire through the distribution and
production of cocaine. In NetEnt's version, we're taken to 🗝 the bustling streets of
Medellín where we're immediately thrown straight into the crossfire. With Grand Theft
Auto-inspired graphics, symbols on 🗝 the reels include J, Q, K and A royal values with
piles of cash, grenades, machine guns and handguns on 🗝 them. You'll also see flamingos
and Cessna's as well as the characters from the TV series, namely José Rodríguez Gacha,
🗝 Connie Murphy and DEA agents Steve Murphy and Javier Peña. The latter two are the most
rewarding and will give 🗝 you 15 times your stake for 5 across a full payline.
The wild
symbol is represented by the DEA badge and 🗝 is of the same value as the agents. As per
usual, the wild substitutes for all standard symbols bar the 🗝 scatter and other special
symbols. When part of a winning combination, the wild triggers the Walking Wild
feature. You've seen 🗝 similar features before - the wild stays on the reels and moves
horizontally one position left with each spin. This 🗝 continues until there are no
winning wild symbols left.
Narcos (NetEnt): Features
In the main game, the Drive-by
feature may trigger randomly 🗝 on any spin. When activated, a sequence is played where a
thug unleashes a hail of bullets from a getaway 🗝 car onto the reels. This is followed by
random transformations of premium symbols into wilds.
There's also a kind of mini-bonus
🗝 known as the Locked Up feature. It becomes activated when 3 or more Locked Up symbols
(with a picture of 🗝 Pablo Escobar) appear on the same row. Once inside the feature,
which is played on a new set, the Escobar 🗝 symbols are moved together and assigned a win
value of between 1 - 10 times your stake.
Fundamentally, what you get 🗝 here is a
win-streak cluster mechanics based feature. Starting with 3 spins, only Locked Up and
Golden briefcase symbols will 🗝 appear on the reels. When 3 or more symbols connect, they
form a winning cluster - when an Escobar symbol 🗝 connects to a winning cluster, a random
value of 1 - 10 times your stake is awarded. If, on the 🗝 other hand, a Golden briefcase
connects, one of the following will apply:
Multiplier - all coin values connected to
the cluster 🗝 are multiplied by x2 or x3.
- all coin values connected to the cluster are
multiplied by x2 or x3. Upgrade 🗝 Symbols - multiple upgrade values in increment of 1
times your total bet are added to the symbols.
- multiple upgrade 🗝 values in increment
of 1 times your total bet are added to the symbols. Big Starting Value - the Golden
🗝 briefcase symbol is given an extra starting value.
Each time a symbol connects to the
cluster, the spin count resets to 🗝 3. The feature ends when no new symbols are added to
the cluster. With a hit frequency of 1 in 🗝 124 spins, the Locked Up feature triggers far
more frequently than the Free Spins feature which, by comparison, has a 🗝 hit frequency
of 1 in 351 spins. The Locked Up feature gives you a chance to pocket up to 271 🗝 times
your total stake.
Last, but certainly not least, we have the epic climactic Free Spins
finale - a shootout that 🗝 is played when you land three scatter symbols on reels 1, 3
and 5 on the same spin. Starting with 🗝 10 free spins, you'll benefit from the Drive-by
feature being in play on every spin which also means there's potential 🗝 for the Walking
Wilds feature to come into play. As you've already seen, the Free Spins feature is hard
to 🗝 trigger, but it's also where most of the monies at. When the smoke clears, you could
be looking at a 🗝 win of up to 1506 times your stake.
Narcos (NetEnt): Verdict
Narcos
brings with it some serious firepower but seems to have 🗝 forgotten to load the guns. For
some reason, NetEnt keeps insisting on these low max wins and ultimately, Narcos just
🗝 falls into the same old NetEnt cliché, which feels like such an incredible waste given
the fact that it otherwise 🗝 has everything going for it. The visuals are excellent and
the overall production quality is jaw-dropping, but it lacks punch, 🗝 simple as that.
Not
only is Narcos trying hard to entertain the player through impressive in-game
cut-scenes, it's also quite a 🗝 feature heavy slot as you have seen. What it leads to in
this case is a Free Spins feature that 🗝 seems to drop less frequently than the D in
Bonanza. The difference here is that the relatively low potential hardly 🗝 makes it worth
the wait.
It pains us to say this, but we're afraid NetEnt's Narcos only manages to
reach the 🗝 rank of a simple drug dealer rather than the mighty drug lord it was aspiring
to be.
