Gladiator

[gerilege]

This week I had the chance to try out the Gladiator slot, and I would like to ask about your experience. I didn't have a bad session, around breakeven, but probably either my expectations were too high, or I was unlucky, but I thought I would get higher wins in the feature. I did not make so much spins, but I managed to get the free spins feature three times. But all three times I only reached the second line for the spin multipliers, after that I found "collect". Once I got 14 spins @2x, twice 12 spins @2x, never any extra scatter or wild, or higher multiplier. From the 14 spins I got around 20x total bet, from the two lot of 12 spins I got 10x and 12x total bet. At all occasions the wins were enough to slightly break even, but nothing really exciting. My questions would be:
-How often can you reach the third and fourth level for the extra scatters/wilds?
-How often can you get higher multiplier than 2?
-How many free spins one can usually get?
-How good does the other feature with the 3 wilds on middle reels pay?
-How often do you get the extra +3 spins due to the middle reel symbol?

I liked the theme very much, but I do not like to get poor features, so your opinion would count a lot for me to decide whether I would play the game again.

[Rusty]

I had the same experience only making the first Two tiers and never getting past.
I managed the free spins Twice in around 2000 spins and the bonus around 3 times.
The bonus on the 1st and 3rd occasions gave me about X20 bet but on the 2nd it gave me X1 bet on all 9 chances the absolute minimum.
My payout is probably about 65% at best on this slot so like most of the new slots very high variance.
I reckon if you don't get up to at least the 3rd tier on free spin rounds then you are doing incredibly well to break even.

Captains treasure pro, Safari heat and Panther moon or also very high variance and if they are not paying you will be mugged.
However if you are today's designated winner they can give plenty of retriggers and pay well.

Golden Games and Azteca are probably medium variance but a bit boring.

Sparta and Arctic treasure are probably lower variance of the new slots but I would not call them low variance compared to some RTG or MG.
They probably give you most play though and are both good games.

Dolphin Reef should of been aborted at design - it probably has about 60% RTP and I have no idea how you can win on this slot other than hit a freak win.
The free spins are hard to hit and you get a whole 5 free spins without a multiplier and no possibility of retrigger!
The only hook is that the wilds expand across reels 2 and 4 but i never hit 5 of a kind even then and the paytable is low.
In normal play you hit 3 of a kind once in a Blue moon, forget 5 of a kind.
This may be the worse slot on the net, so much so I have asked what the RTP is and how it is made up - I really am curious how it can be anywhere near 90%

I would say play the lower variance slots if you play for fun as well as winning and if you hit dabble in the higher variance games but don't waste your money on Dolphin Reef and Gladiator, well Gladiator maybe worth a pop in case you get very lucky.

You asked about Gladiator and got a full review, sorry about that.

[AudiManinBoro]

Ive played Gladiator a lot and the bonus round is definatly determined before you even click. Ive had hundreds of that bonus round out and only once managed to get to third tier, no matter what or where you click on the second tier, 99 % of the time your going to get collect. Ive stopped playing it, totally fixed beyond belief in my opinion.

[Webzcas]

Gladiator is one of my favourites slots for the last 12 months. Had a couple of nice hits on it too

[gerilege]

Thanks for your feedback.
I also searched the forums and found some existing threads with similiar experience. Based on what is written there and in this thread, it must be extremely hard to get to the third level for the extra scatter, not talking about the extra wild.
In that case I am not going to play this game again. If it offers a "feature in feature", I prefer to have a reasonable chance to hit that part of the feature as well. One out of _many_ is not enough. Otherwise imho its design is flawed, and it does not matter how nice the graphics are, or how good the feature _might_ get.

I might experience a bit further in play mode, but not for real money at the moment. As of now, those free spins are a big disappointment for me. And I have to say I am not amazed by any of the new Playtech slots. I do much better on the older ones.

[Rusty]

Yeah I am with you on gladiator as I mentioned, too hard to hit.

I might experience a bit further in play mode, but not for real money at the moment. As of now, those free spins are a big disappointment for me. And I have to say I am not amazed by any of the new Playtech slots. I do much better on the older ones.

You have to admit though some of the new games look fantastic, better than anything else out there I would say but each to their own of course and as you say if the payouts are very low then pretty graphics are going to get tired very quickly.

Let us know how you got on in free mode if you remember.

[me_and_ed]

Gladiator is a Hoover, Azteca may be medium variance but if you hit 4 or 5 of the bonus symbols the pays are great.

[Rusty]

Gladiator is a Hoover, Azteca may be medium variance but if you hit 4 or 5 of the bonus symbols the pays are great.

Yeah I was lucky enough to hit 5 and got a great payout but the chances are slim.
First of all you have to hit 5 to have a chance of the really big prize then you have to get lucky in the pick round too.
Hitting 4 can pay ok.
The free spins pay very little and are hard to trigger and because there are so many dead symbols normal wins are hard to find which accounts for medium variance.
Decent game though and slightly different.

[gerilege]

Well, it took a while, but I finally managed to play a bit in free play mode. I played around 3300 spins in fun mode, and here are my results. Of course this is a very limited sample, but shows a few key figures:
- I got the feature 21 times = once in every 159 spins in average. Based on gameplay I think the real probability to get the feature is better than this.
- On all 21 occassions I got a multiplier of 2. Looks like it is extremely difficult to get a multiplier higher or lower than two.
- The average number of free spins was about 10.
- I got an extra scatter 12 times (about 57% of the free spins)
- I got an extra wild 2 times (about 10% of the free spins)
- I got an average of 4 extra spins during the free spins (lowest 0, highest 33!)
- I won an average of 58 total bets (lowest 6x total bet, highest 400x total bet)

A few more interesting things I noticed:
- There was only one occasion when I got less than 10 spins and no extra scatter
- There was only one occasion when I got more than 10 spins (11) and got an extra scatter
- There were not a single occasion when I got at least 12 spins and an extra scatter. Looks like it is extremely difficult to get an extra scatter when you get more than 10 spins, and it is difficult to NOT to get an extra scatter when you get less than 10 spins (Which surprisingly means that you cross your fingers for less free spins playing this game).
- I have never got exactly 10 spins. This might be coincidence, but considering the number of occasions I got 8,9 and 12 spins, I think it is by design.
- The average feature payout when I got no extra scatters was about 23x total bet.
- The average feature payout when I got extra scatters was about 84x total bet.
- During my play, a feature with an extra scatter was about 3.5 times more powerful than one without an extra scatter
- Assuming a 94% theoretical payout, the feature contribution to payout was 38,75% during my play, which I feel quite realistic.

My sample was too small to draw any conclusions about the characteristics of an extra scatter.

I hope this information will be useful to get a feeling about the gameplay of Gladiator.

[spiderlegz]

The HE on Gladiator ranges from 4,39 to 12% depending on which setting is used.