Ride the Lightning

Ride the Lightning: Slot Overview

Ride the Lightning was the title of Metallica's second album and has been labelled thrash metal at its finest, while also introducing genre expanding elements such as acoustic guitars and more elaborate harmonies. Interestingly, the term 'ride the lightning' comes from the Stephen King novel The Stand in reference to death by electric chair. That's quite a powerful group of cultural touchstones casino game maker Pragmatic Play may or may not have been attempting to latch onto when it designed Ride the Lightning, an online slot with no official links to metal bands or horror writers, but one with a strong retro-leaning.

Not sure about the riding part, but the game flashes up bolts of lightning in a background depicting clouds as if they are flying along at a great speed, though the loop reset deadens the effect. Acknowledging the thrash metal connotations a title like Ride the Lightning conjures, the background music is very 80s metal, with thumping drums, driving riffs, and little Metallica-esque fills. It is music made for a slot, though, so don't expect a Grammy Award, but it's the kind of tune Beavis and Butt-head might headbang to. For a while. It gets repetitive.

In another nod to the past, Ride the Lightning is a 3x3 arranged slot with 9 paylines awarding wins of 3 OAK in size only. A small game gets a highly volatile math model nonetheless, and the RTP is 96.5% at best, with lower models available. The hit rate isn't bad for a 3-reeler at 1 in 3.29 spins, and players may stake 10 c to $/€250 per spin.

Just 5 regular paying symbols land on Ride the Lightning's reels. They are the Bar, double Bar, seven, double seven, and triple seven. Winning combinations of these symbols are worth from 0.5 times the stake up to 7 times the stake.

Ride the Lightning: Slot Features

Ride the Lightning has 3 different wild symbols, which can appear on any reel in the base game and in free spins. These are the blue bolt wild, the red bolt wild, and the 3x wild. The 3x wild multiplies the value of all winning combinations it is part of except jackpot wins. Wilds substitute for any regular paying symbol.

Jackpot Wins

Hitting any combination of 3 wild symbols on a payline awards the 25x the bet Mini jackpot. Hitting 3 blue bolt wilds on a payline awards the 100x Minor, landing 3 red bolt wilds on a payline triggers the 250x Major, and three 3x wilds on a payline awards the 500x Grand jackpot.

Free Spins

Scatter symbols appear on the central reel only. When a scatter symbol hits, 10 free spins are awarded. During the round, on each spin a multiplier of x2 to x20 is randomly selected and is applied to the total win of the spin, including jackpot wins. Hitting a scatter symbol awards an extra +10 free spins.

Feature Buy

With a price tag of 100x the bet, players are able to buy access to the free spins bonus round. The RTP when playing Ride the Lightning this way is 96.48%, so slightly lower than regular betting.

Ride the Lightning: Slot Verdict

You know, it's too bad Pragmatic Play didn't team up with Metallica to make Ride the Lightning an officially licensed product instead of the watered-down imitator it ended up becoming. Competitor Play'n GO has done it before. Not with Metallica, but other big artists like Saxon, Kiss, and Twisted Sister have allowed their names to be associated with online slots. A Metallica slot would actually be pretty huge, and while what's in this game isn't bad, the music and lightning storm background have a level of energy, for instance, but if Ride the Lightning was a branded heavy metal slot, it would be a disappointingly small one.

Positive points? The win cap is quite high at 10,000x the bet, and hitting it would be the logical, if rare, meeting of the Grand jackpot and an x20 multiplier in the free spins round. Otherwise, yeah, okay, Ride the Lightning is a 3-reel slot that possibly attracts player attention through its trio of wild symbols and their substituting, multiplier, and jackpot-triggering abilities. That's about it, really. Ride the Lightning clearly isn't a Prag flagship release, and beyond the decent potential, there isn't much to make it stand out.