Narcos Mexico: Slot Overview
Hold onto your margaritas, folks, the Narcos franchise is back in another branded slot titled Narcos Mexico. This one comes from Red Tiger and is based on the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico, which was penned to be the fourth season of Narcos but forked off on its own path. A similar thing has happened in the slots world. The original game, Narcos, was released by sister company NetEnt after more than a year of build-up. Unfortunately, reality didn't quite match the hype, and while Narcos looked fantastic, it ultimately lacked a knock-out punch, being disappointingly low in terms of potential. The good news is Red Tiger has seriously addressed winning potential in a follow-up slot that offers a brand-new bonus game based around cartel wars.
Two things the games have in common is a similar look and vibe. Narcos Mexico has the same neat cartoon realism the first one had, representing a deadly serious theme, but in a somewhat safe way. Five bosses grace the load screen between bullet-ridden cars, palm trees, and mansions, setting the mood. Exotic, yet it makes one wonder how or why some people are willing to put up with all the danger to live in a big house by the beach, and would it really be worth it?
Anyhoo, Narcos Mexico has the same setup as before, the action occurring on a 5x3, 243 ways to win game grid. Wins hit when at least three matching symbols land in any row, starting from the leftmost side. Highly volatile, the return to player value has taken a dip, now coming in at 95.7%. Stake range is much reduced as well, to the chagrin of high rollers perhaps, maxing at $/€10, or going as low as 10 p/c per spin.
Hit spin, and nine different pay symbols appear throughout the base game. These are five low-value tiles depicting 9-A card ranks in front of things like skulls and dynamite. Hit five of them for a payout of 0.4 to 1 times your stake. Premium symbols are the four cartel leaders, paying out 2-5x the bet for a line of five of a kind. Slabs of dope with a scorpion on top are the wild symbol, appearing on reels 2-4 to replace any of the regular paying symbols.
Narcos Mexico: Slot Features
In the base game, a couple of random modifiers pop up from time to time, called Supply Drop and Double Cash. When the Supply Drop is activated, an aeroplane passes above the game and leaves wild symbols on the reels. Double Cash randomly triggers after a winning spin, and the prize amount is doubled in value.
Win Exchange
In Narcos Mexico, when you win 100x your stake or more, you can exchange an amount equal to 100x the bet for 3 Cartel Spins while pocketing the remaining amount. Alternatively, when you win 30x to 100x the bet, you can gamble the lot for the chance to win 3 Cartel Spins. The gamble takes place on a bonus wheel divided into red or green segments. Land in green to win, red to lose.
Cartel Spins
Cartel Spins are the main bonus game, triggered when 3 Cartel Spins symbols hit on reels 1, 3, and 5 in the base game or from the Win Exchange. This round takes place on a completely different game board 10x10 in size. In the four corners are four cartel leaders, while on each spin, the remaining cells display blank spaces, Mystery Territory symbols, Phones, or Planes. If these symbols land next to a leader, they are activated, lock in place, and reset spins back to 3. Activated symbols act like so:
- Mystery Territory – reveals a bet multiplier value.
- Phone Symbol – doubles all multiplier values in the territory or territories it is adjacent to.
- Plane Symbol – increases the multiplier values in adjacent territories by between 1 and 5
On following spins, if new symbols land next to activated symbols, they are activated as well. In this way, each cartel leaders' territory grows in size. When activated symbols touch, the leaders battle, and the stronger leader captures the other one's turf. Cartel Spins end when all spaces are filled, you run out of spins, or the win cap is reached.
Narcos Mexico: Slot Verdict
Kudos to Red Tiger for taking the series in a new direction, and Narcos Mexico is a different experience compared to the previous Narcos game. Well, maybe not 100% new, as the look and feel are similar, in a good way, creating a positive continuity from one slot to the other. The presentation is arguably not quite as good as the original Narcos, although that impression might have been because the impact was less on a second viewing. Not taking anything away from Narcos Mexico, though. It looks good and is a nice addition to the series; it just didn't feel quite as 'dangerous' as before.
However, the good news is there are elements of Narcos Mexico that leave Narcos in the dust. The most obvious one is potential. Max win let the last game down, and Red Tiger has ensured that won't happen again by pushing payouts out to a much more respectable 10,486x the bet. Winning that amount or attempting to in Cartel Spins is fairly enjoyable too. The bonus game kind of fell a bit flat at first, after some weak results. But after settling in, it started to make more sense. What seemed to work well was when cartel leaders took over other cartel leaders' territories then landing Phone and/or Plane symbols to boost the values of large swathes of the board. It might not be as viscerally exciting as the Drive-by feature, yet the turf war can certainly heat up. Having said all of that, if you're not into hold&win type games, it's possible Narcos Mexico won't float your boat either.
In the end, Narcos Mexico has the sort of numbers that should appease players disappointed by the first one. Cartel Spins might not be slinging bullets around with reckless abandon all the time, but Red Tiger has progressed the series from foot soldier to a higher-ranking member of the cartel.
Narcos Mexico might not be slinging bullets around with reckless abandon all the time, but Red Tiger has progressed the series from foot soldier to a higher-ranking member of the cartel.
