New GV slot Olympians – Gold Medal material…?

[KasinoKing]

Here’s my first-impression review of this brand new GV slot.

Firstly, The Good:
Most of you probably already know it was Grand Virtual slots which inspired me to produce the ‘Funky Slots’ page on my website, because they were so different to anything else I’d seen. This one breaks the mould, but did not disappoint.
This latest offering looks like it could be the first of a new generation of slots from this stable because it is certainly a bit different to all its predecessors. For starters it’s the first GV slot I’ve seen where the reels actually spin in the traditional way! It still has one of the main features which make GV slots so funky though; Wins pay anywhere on the lines, not just left to right or right to left!

The Mechanics:
This is a 24 line, 5 reel slot with just one bonus feature; 8 to 20 free-spins @ x1
The reason the spins pay only x1 is that they have ‘sticky’ wilds (which GV first introduced on their Game Show slot and which was subsequently copied by MG for Tomb raider 2); When the wild symbol falls on reels 1, 2, 4 or 5 it sticks there for 2 more spins. When it lands on reel 3 it stays for 3 spins.

The Graphics:
The slot runs full screen (much bigger than all their old ones), all the symbols are all ‘painting style’ images of the 12 Olympian Greek gods (no 10, J, Q, K here!), all are animated and I have to say they are possibly the most beautiful graphics I’ve ever seen anywhere!
(You need to play it to fully appreciate them)

The Payouts:
A bit early to say as I only played for about an hour in fun mode, but I think it’s going to be low to medium variance. You will hit multiple wins on nearly every spin, but most of them are very small. I hit the 8 free-spins feature 6 times in about 200 spins and it re-triggered once. The pay-back varied from 0 (yes, ZERO!) to around bet x 28. The sticky wilds make for a big payout potential, but just like on Scary Rich, if you don’t get the wilds….
The jackpot (5 wilds with max lines played) is bet x 40,000 during normal spins, but reduces to bet x 4,000 the free-spins for obvious reasons.

Finally, The Bad Bits:
I’m sorry to say that still no-one can produce the perfect slot, and here’s what I don’t like about this one:-
1. When I started playing it was set to 20 win-lines, not the maximum 24. I didn’t notice this for quite a while and if I had hit the jackpot it would have been a severely reduced amount.
2. It only seems to run in full-screen mode no matter which of the 3 available options you select. Also it took so long to close the game I thought it had ‘frozen’.
3. The wins are only displayed as coins – no option to show as a monetary value, even though the cost of the spin is displayed in money.
4. No autoplay! Same as all their other slots. When are these slot designers going to realise that autoplay (with a spin counter) is the slot lovers best friend???

Overall first impression score: 8/10 – Very playable, but room for a few improvements.

Screenshots:

The beautiful graphics:-
Graphics.JPG


The Free-spins with 'sticky' wilds (3 in this case):-
FreeSpins.JPG


The Paytable:-
Pay30june08.JPG

KK

[bugola72]

I had great fun playing this last Saturday,took me a while also to notice that max lines are 24, got some good free spins with lots of retriggers and I must admit it does not hurt my eye's like graphics on other slots.

It does slow the system down when closing as I too noticed this thinking it was frozen but overall a very enjoyable game.

Thanks KK for posting a great review.

[Rusty]

I recently reopened my GV account and will be checking this slot out.
Great review KK, thanks.

[james01]

Wow! Thanks for the screenie. It's very attractive, if a bit girly for my tastes.