At First Glance
NetEnt has released a new slot called Motorhead. For the unenlightened, the game pays homage to an English rock band called, well, Motorhead — a band that has sold over 30 million albums and produced music for more than 40 years. I’m hardly into that genre of music, but I’d play any game that generates cash. The Motorhead slot delivers in that respect with lots of mystery reels, mystery symbols and extra spins too.
Game Basics
Trust a rock band to shake things up a little. Motorhead has a unconventional slot reel setup – the first two reels are made up of three symbols, reel three and four have four symbols while reel five has five symbols. I was curious to see what kind of symbols would exude both the heavy metal vibe as well as the gambling vibe.
Well, it’s clover leaves, bells and horseshoes painted in a darker style. The special symbol is definitely the wild symbol. Motorhead, the band has an iconic song called Ace of Spades. Of course, the game designers had to pick up the reference and modeled the wild symbol after that song. The wild symbol stands in as substitute for any other symbol and completes paylines.
There are a whopping 76 (fixed) paylines in Motorhead. That’s 76 ways to win and an incredibly fast-paced game. The wins range from 2x to 570x your stake, or £114,000 in a single spin! Bets start at 20p to £200 per spin. The game has a return to player percentage of 96.98%, which is far above average for all online slots.
Bonus Features
There are three bonus features in Motorhead: Mystery Reel, Mystery Symbols and Extra Spins. Yes, the game designers have shrouded the features in a lot of mystery, for what is in fact Stacked symbols that players are already familiar with. Let’s go through them one by one.
The Mystery Reel feature covers at least one of the reels with stacks of mystery symbols. When the reels come to a pause, all the symbols covered with the Mystery symbol transforms into a randomly selected symbol (except scatter symbol). This feature occurs on every single spin, including extra spins.
The Bomber feature introduces clusters of mystery symbols on the reels; these mystery symbols then transform into one similar symbol and generally increase the chances of completing paylines. These clusters generally cover at least 50 to 70 percent of the board at any one time. Unlike the stacked symbols in the mystery reels, each cluster can also cover several reels at a time. This delivers some very nice four-of-a-kind wins with 30x your wager. If you’re wondering where the Bomber element comes in, it’s the visual effects. The game goes into some sort of emergency mode and blares the sirens; the clusters are then dropped in like bombs.
However, I can’t determine whether these stacks and clusters actually generate more wins than the game would without them, or if it just creates the illusion that it’s easier to win. The Bomber feature is activated randomly.
Extra spins are doled out in 10s in the Motorhead slot game. You trigger them when you get three Scatter symbols anywhere on the reels. During the extra spins rounds, the mystery reels and bomber feature can now contain Wild symbols. This bumps up the chances of winning just slightly higher; wins that contain Wild symbols are ever so slightly larger in value. Unlike other slots, the extra spins cannot be re-triggered.
How Does The Game Perform?
Motorhead has got the full heavy metal, rock and roll theme on lockdown. The game is set in a grunge-y dark stage with speakers and amplifiers on both sides. Motorhead’s original music is constantly playing in the background and is cleverly engineered to match the pace of your game. Occasionally, you’ll have Lemmy, the band’s lead singer shouting sound bites. If you’re not a huge fan of the music (like me), you can even turn off “rock mode” and play in a little peace. The game is compatible with all devices, including desktop, mobile and tablet.
The Feature That You Should Look Out For
Motorhead is part of a special NetEnt series titled Rocks: The Tour, alongside Guns n Roses and Jimi Hendrix. It’s very interesting to see how the team celebrates the legends of rock and roll. Motorhead is one of the most legendary, credited for re-energizing heavy metal in the late 1970s. Anyway, NetEnt put together a team of their best designers to create fan art that accurately represents each band’s vibe and closely integrated each band’s music into the gameplay. The result is quite a masterpiece.
And Finally…
The tricky part of creating games around such niche themes is that it’s bound to turn some fans off. NetEnt tried to appeal as many players as possible by keeping Motorhead fairly generic. The gameplay is lively and though it’s not like Loopy Lotto with unique gameplay mechanics, Motorhead does have plenty of drama from the mystery symbols. If you’re a fan of rock and roll music, Motorhead is definitely a must-try gaming experience. Crank up your volume to the maximum and spin away!
