The Lord of the Rings Pokies
Pokies themed around movies are some of the most popular at online casinos around the globe, and when a game based on one of the biggest films of all time comes out, it’s guaranteed to attract crowds of players looking to re-create the magic of the cinema in a new format.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is part of the Microgaming range and comes complete with some of the features that have made pokies from this developer so widely played, such as free spins, stunning graphics and their 243 Ways to Win payout system.
It’s hard to believe that this is based on a film released way back in 2001, but after such a long time, certainly in the online casino world, it’s still a big attraction.
Off to Middle Earth
What’s immediately obvious when opening up this pokie is that thanks to a licencing agreement with New Line Cinema, Microgaming have been able to include real images from the film, rather than drawings or cartoons. So we have photos of the major characters like Frodo, played by Elijah Wood, Sam as played by Sean Astin and Viggo Mortensen’s portrayal of Aragorn among others.
These are the higher value symbols, while the classic card symbols like 10, J, Q, K and A, all designed to keep with the theme, make up the lower value ones.
The Lord of the Rings
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A background image of rolling hills sets off the 5 reels, which are in turn framed by a Celtic style surrounding. At the bottom of the game is a set of control buttons which players use to set a coin value that can be from 0.01 to 0.05 and the number of coins from 1 to 20. As there are no conventional paylines, the minimum bet is 0.30 per spin and the maximum is 30.00, with wins created by identical symbols coming to a rest on successive reels starting from the left.
A nice touch that’s sure to please fans of the movies is the Cinematic Spins feature that doesn’t actually pay anything, but sees short clips from the film pay out across the reels. Not particularly rewarding for those of us who have seen LOTR about a million times, but no harm done either.
While there are plenty of chances to score a winning spin in the base game, there are some bonus symbols that will help players to get even more rewards, with The Lord of the Rings logo being a wild that will act as others if it helps to complete a line. To make it more likely that lines will be made up, it will be stacked several high, while there’s also the Eye of Sauron symbol that will expand across the middle reel turning it completely wild.
Where would a Lord of the Rings pokie be without the Ring turning up? Not to worry, as here it is, acting as a scatter symbol that can pay multiplies of the total bet, rather than just the line bet which others are worth. Players only need to land 2 scatters for a 1x payout, while 5 of them at once will be worth 100x the triggering bet.
It also starts off 15 free spins when 3 or more appear and in each spin there’s the added advantage of a random reel turning into a wild. Landing 3 or more scatters again during the free games will re-trigger them, with a further 15 spins tacked on to the end of any that are still to play out.
Sweet as the Shire or More Like Mordor?
It goes without saying that The Lord of the Rings pokie looks fantastic and has a couple of decent bonus features to go with it. Fans of the films will certainly want to give these reels a spin, but there are a couple of slight disappointments to go along with the nice design.
The playing card symbols have been seen on numerous other pokies, and while some players like to see familiar icons on the reels, there are so many more characters and locations that could have been included. Perhaps it was all part of the licensing deal.
Other features that would have been nice to see include prizes for the wild symbol when it makes up a line on its own, while the gamble game that has the potential to turn small wins into bigger ones is also missing here.
But these are fairly minor issues and to be honest, it’s still a pretty good game and it could have no features whatsoever and fans of the films would still play it.