Platoon Slot
This slot is based around the film Platoon which was released in 1986. Charlie Sheen played the lead character Chris Taylor, who dropped out of college and volunteered to serve for the US army in Vietnam. The film is known for its harrowing portrayal of the war and was honoured with both the best Picture and best Director Oscars at the Academy Awards. Nearly thirty years later, the movie has now become the subject of its own slot, featuring many of the cast of the film. This slot has an original take on the wild symbols and a free spins bonus round.
As you might imagine this slot is set against the backdrop of a jungle setting. Five of the symbols relate to the characters of the film and you’ll also find a helicopter and a tank as well as the playing card symbols from 9 to Ace on the reels, each with their Vietnam style dog tags draped around them. The game does a good job of recreating the tension of the film – you won’t find any jolly music playing throughout. In fact all the sounds at the slot are what you might expect to hear when at war – including the sound of troops traipsing through the jungle, the sound of a rifle being readied, transport coming and going and commanders talking through their walkie-talkies. The only other sound being the somewhat atmospheric music played when you enjoy a win.
Setup and Play for Platoon Slot
This slot has five reels and 30 win lines, although you’ll have the option of playing fewer, all the way down to just one. You’ll also choose the coin value and line bet size which in conjunction with the number of win lines will give you your total stake for each spin.
Every symbol at this pays out when you land at least three in a row on a win line from left to right, but obviously the highest wins are reserved for when landing five in a row. The Charlie Sheen character pays 1,000 coins for five in a row, while Willem Defoe, Tom Berenger, Forest Whitaker and Keith David pay 500, 150, 100 and 80 coins respectively. The playing card symbols bring up the rear.
The slot has an auto play feature which allows you to set the slot to run without interruption – this only stopping when a feature is landed, you run out of funds or you tell it to stop by hitting the button.
The wild symbol is the tank which will replace any other symbol in the game apart from the bonus symbol. There are two key differences between this wild and a standard one however. Firstly, any wins that make use of the wild are awarded a 3x multiplier. However, perhaps the biggest advantage is that every time it appears, you’ll gain free re-spins as the tank moves one space to the left each time – this will continue until the tank disappears. This means you can have a maximum of four re-spins if the wild appears originally on the fifth reel.
The bonus free spins round is activated when you land the helicopter scatter symbol three or more times across any of the reels.
Platoon Slot Free Spins Bonus Round
You’ll gain a larger number free spins in this round the more scatter symbols you land. The minimum three scatters give you 8 free spins (plus an award of 5x your total bet size immediately). Four or five scatters give you 10 free spins (plus 10x) and 12 free spins (plus 15x) respectively. During the round the free spins can be re-triggered, although this time around you’ll not gain the immediate win amount on top.
Platoon Slot Conclusion
Having seen Platoon, you’ll know it’s not a not a film that can be taken lightly, so creating a slot based around the same theme faced the challenge of not having the light-heartedness found at a great number of online slots. To their credit, iSoftbet have achieved this. The slot looks good, but has a slightly dark feel to it which fits in perfectly with the movie and this is only added to by the gritty, lifelike soundtrack. The gameplay is good too – the wild feature the particular highlight for me. Fans of the film will immediately take to this slot, but it will also appeal to many others players. This is a recommended slot.
