Almost a year and a half after the surprising announcement at the prestigious ICE venue, NetEnt rolled out its ambitious mafia-themed Narcos, and it was soon evident why it took so long. After all, it took much longer to nab the villain of the game, Pablo Escobar, a once-dreaded drug-mafia overlord who inspired the American TV series Narcos, which further motivated NetEnt to adapt the television show to a video slot.
NetEnt takes you into the thick of drug violence, and you are caught in the crossfire. Features of the game include Lock Up and Drive By where your screen gets riddled with bullets. With graphics inspired by Grand Theft Auto, the most valuable game symbols are characters from the TV show: Jose Rodriguez Gacha, Connie Murphy, and the DEA operatives Steve Murphy and Javier Pera. The DEA agents are the most lucrative and pay 15 times your bet in the base game if either of them appears on all 5 reels.
We wonder why this super-creative slot has those high cards, when they are superimposed by cash piles, grenades, machine guns, and Cessnas. The DEA badge is the wild of the game and has the same value as the agents that wear it. When the badge or badges appear, they can substitute all other symbols, except the scatter and the locked-up symbols, and help form winning combinations. The scatter is the mugshot of Pablo Escobar. The format of the game’s grid is standard enough with 5 reels and 3 rows, but random 243 paylines is a bit unusual for NetEnt.
Narcos is a mid-volatility slot with an average theoretical return to player rate of 96.23%. You can expect some decent winnings in the base game, though the real firepower lies in the bonus games. The wide betting window between $0.20 and $400.00 makes it suitable for all players, from casual and conservative gamers to the most elevated of high rollers. You may also need to be patient and budget out your game play with intelligent betting.
Winning combinations are made when identical symbols land on 3, 4, and 5 reels. Payouts are decided by the values of the symbols, which make up the winning recipes. The win multipliers are enhanced in the bonus games, which is what you should wait for while you keep getting the modest payouts in the base game.
The Walking Wilds feature can give you the biggest payouts – the maximum being 1,002 times you bet on the spin. The maximum payout Narcos can give you overall is 1,506 times your wager while the game’s total winnings are capped at $602,400.
Whenever the DEA Badge, which is the wild symbol, forms a winning combination, it becomes a Walking Wild. The DEA Badge remains on the grid, but horizontally shifts to the reel on its left with every spin. This wild feature continues until there are no more winning combos.
This bonus is randomly triggered in the base game when a car arrives from behind the reels and a person starts shooting from it. The bullets create holes in the symbols, which is when some high-value symbols are then converted into wilds. This leads to more identical landings and higher multipliers.
The Locked-Up symbols are represented by Pablo Escobar. When three of him appear on a single row, the three symbols come together and pay out between 1 and 10 times your bet. You get 3 free spins when Escobar and the golden briefcase icons appear. The latter is worth 11 to 26 times your bet. When the golden briefcase is part of a winning combo, one of the following will happen:
If Escobar or the golden briefcase is part of another rewarding cluster, the free spins are reset to 3, making it possible to win 271 times your bet on the spin.
You get 10 free spins when 3 or more car symbols land on reels 1, 3, and 5 at once. On each spin, 1 or more high worth icons can become random wilds and provide bigger payouts. The walking wilds feature also comes into play. If they are still on the reels at the end of the free spins, you get more free spins until the walking wilds disappear.
Narcos is a street thriller, and playing it while you are on the move can enhance the excitement. The game is fully-optimized for mobile gaming and can support major mobile platforms like Windows Phone, Android, and iOS, etc.
This means you enjoy Narcos on all smartphones and tablets, which run on these platforms. Narcos is programmed with HTML5. The game’s graphics seamlessly adjust to the small screen, and you can play with enhanced audio-visual quality, just like on desktops and laptops.
We think NetEnt has come out with an uncommon, but highly entertaining theme by adapting a popular crime series into a slot game. Narcos balances exciting game play with mid-variance slot rewards. This branded game was worth the wait, and is sure to become an enduring success like others in NetEnt’s portfolio.