There are few things more recognizably American than the road trip, with the sun on your back and the wind in your hair as you speed across thousands of miles of hills, plains, deserts and small towns. But does the great American road trip translate well into a slot?
5 Reel Drive tries to bring all the classic imagery into one place, with truckers, police cars, roadside diner coffee and many more symbols vie for your attention. But is this slot a classic jaunt up Route 66, or is it a flat tyre? Let’s take a look in our 5 Reel Drive review.
It may upset you to learn that a lot of Route 66 is now overgrown and forgotten, long since replaced by modern six-lane highways and chain service stations instead of winding back-country roads and mom and pop diners. That’s a pretty good metaphor for this slot, which has an air of faded glory about it. They’ve clearly put a fair amount of effort into designing the theme and the symbols, every one is original without any generic 9 – A icons in sight, and they’re pretty well drawn too. The game harks back to the glory days of American motoring, when families would take days travelling between motels and family-run restaurants across the midwest, and the symbols reflect that: Burgers, donuts, pots of coffee, fellow motorists, police cars, taxi drivers, dice in the windscreen and hulking slices of blueberry pie.
However, along with the upsides of nostalgia also come the downsides. While the symbols look ok, the animation is very basic, with flashing lights on the police car scatter and the choppy, stilted whirl of the reels the only real action there. The 5 Reel Drive slot game is a simple affair, with five reels and three rows supplemented by a road sign wild and a police car scatter, while the betting limits are low at between £/€/$2.25 and £/€/$18.00 per spin. Having said that, while the design might be old fashioned so are the payouts, and with a high RTP of 96.95%, you can’t accuse this slot of being stingy with its money.
One of the biggest potential downsides to this game is that it doesn’t have any bonus rounds at all. It’s designed as a simple recreation of old-style fruit machine slots, where the most activity required of you was to pull the lever and watch the reels spin, nothing like the complicated games of today full of bonuses and mini-games. How much this affects the game experience depends on the player: You may feel short-changed by the lack of action here if mini-games are your thing, or you may feel like the lack of complication on offer is a refreshing change of pace.
5 Reel Drive is an old school slot in the truest sense of the word, sacrificing modern graphics and bonuses for a slimmed back slot experience. It’s just you and the reels, so while you feel like you could win on any spin, you’re left wanting more than just the basics this game offers.
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