Ultimate Slot of America: Slot Overview
America, self-proclaimed ‘land of the free, home of the brave’ is the topic of software provider Hacksaw Gaming‘s online slot Ultimate Slot of America. There are actually 35 counties in the Americas, but when people say the word, they’re often referring to the USA, the stars and stripes, big cars, big food, big everything. Whilst the butt of jokes in certain slots, Hacksaw Gaming has taken a different approach and designed a flag-waving, chest-thumping game that uses Liberty Gems to multiply wins and create blocks of wild multipliers through the base game and three bonus rounds of ascending desirability.
Hopefully, you like red, white and blue because they’re prominent background colours in the game. Not just on the flag but on the eagle-headed, ripped, winged, half-human, half-bird dude standing next to the reels. Rock ‘n’ roll blasts the airwaves to complete the audiovisual assault, and the total effect, summed up in a single word, would be ‘bitchin’.
Ultimate Slot of America’s 5×5 gaming grid drops in 25 symbols per spin that create winning combinations along 19 paylines from the leftmost reel. Hiding coyly behind the stars and stripes is a medium volatile math model, available in four RTP configurations, maxing out at 96.35%. As for bet selection, the choices range from 10 c to $/€100 per spin.
The symbol hierarchy is made up of 8 regular paying symbols – J to A card ranks, baseballs, rocking out signs, Uncle Sam, and a very serious-looking eagle. Royal wins of 5 OAK pay 1 times the bet, while premium symbol 5 OAKs are worth 2 to 10 times the bet.
Ultimate Slot of America: Slot Features
If liberty is what you want, then liberty is what you get in Ultimate Slot of America, with luck, in the form of Liberty Gems, which are wild multipliers that can trigger Freedom Respins and are sticky at times. Three bonus games are on hand, while a handful of feature buys round the section off.
Liberty Gems
Liberty Gems are wild, so they replace any regular pay symbols in a winning combination. Landing a Liberty Gem triggers a Freedom Respin, with all Liberty Gems sticky for the Respin. If more Liberty Gems land, another Freedom Respin is awarded, continuing like this till no new Liberty Gems land or no available positions are left. When a Liberty Gem participates in a win, the win is multiplied by the Gem’s multiplier of x1 to x10. Multipliers add to each other before being applied when more than one is part of the same win. A line of 5 Liberty Gems pays 10 times the bet.
Gem Clusters
When 4 or more Liberty Gems form a square of 2×2 to 5×5 in size, they create a Gem Cluster, which can grow if additional Liberty Gems land around it to make a bigger square. Two types of Gem Cluster may appear. Classic Clusters are assigned a multiplier, which is the total of each Liberty Gem multiplier that created it. In an Epic Cluster, all contributing multipliers are added together, and the total is multiplied by x2 to x20 to determine the final value.
Spin-Dependence Day
This bonus with 10 free spins is awarded by landing 3 FS scatters. It has the same mechanics as the base game, but it has a greater chance of landing Liberty Gems. In this feature and the following two bonus rounds, landing 2 or 3 FS scatters awards a further +2 or +4 free spins, respectively.
Red, White, Bling!
Hitting 4 FS scatters in the base game triggers this round with 10 free spins. In this feature, all Liberty Gems and Clusters that hit are sticky, but landed Liberty Gems do not trigger Freedom Respins.
Pursuit of Riches (Hidden Bonus)
Hit 5 FS scatters in the main game, and 10 free Pursuit of Riches spins are awarded. This feature has the same mechanics as Spin-Dependence Day, plus at least 5 Liberty Gems land on each spin, not including the Freedom Respins.
Feature Buy
BonusHunt FeatureSpins cost 3x the bet to make each spin 5 times more likely to trigger a bonus game, while Freedom FeatureSpins cost 25x to land at least 4 Liberty Gems on each spin. At 100x, USA Epic Drop FeatureSpins land at least one 2×2 Gem Cluster. Spin-Dependence Day can be bought for 125x or Red, White, Bling! costs 200x.
Ultimate Slot of America: Slot Verdict
After reviewing games like Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, it was odd playing a USA-themed slot that wasn’t poking fun at ‘Murica. There were no overt jokes about segments of the population, no mocking of politicians, no gun or fast food references. Still, Ultimate Slot of America did give off faint ‘America F##k Yeah!’ from ‘Team America World Police‘ vibes, but it also felt at times like an honest to goodness hand on heart salute to Old Glory while a single tear glistened down the cheek homage. Perhaps the humour is buried deep, perhaps it’s obvious, perhaps chuckles are totally absent. Maybe Ultimate Slot of America is a mirror that reflects whatever our inner feelings towards the world’s top superpower may be.
Then again, maybe we’ve reviewed too many slots and are overthinking it, but Hacksaw Gaming productions are often more subtle than this, more refined, shall we say. Contrast Ultimate Slot of America to Wanted Dead or a Wild, for example, an artful reinterpretation of the American Wild West rather than a generic all-guns blazing middle of a one-horse town slot experience. Ultimate Slot of America is also not super subtle in terms of features, either. Not bad features, to be sure, while leaning closer to brute force than artful finesse. Hacksaw Gaming is a strong proponent of wild multiplier symbols, and these are Ultimate Slot of America’s critical element. Sticky wilds during Freedom Respins are a plus, but the way multiplier values add together and the total then multiplied when forming an Epic Cluster has to be the game’s acme moment.
Even when Epic Clusters do not appear, sticky wild multipliers are potent in their own right, and Ultimate Slot of America’s 10,000x the bet top prize can be won in any game mode. Weigh it all up, and like a visit to the nearest fast food drive-through to choke back a bucket of salt and saturated fat, Ultimate Slot of America hits a certain spot, but it wasn’t Hacksaw Gaming’s most spectacular piece of work.
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