Lucha Libre

The best online slots are those that use a fun theme that's incorporated into the graphics and gameplay in a major way, and that's exactly what you'll get with the new Lucha Libre slot by Realtime Gaming.

The Mexican style of professional wrestling is full of high-action theatrics with bodies flying everywhere, and it's known as Lucha Libre. A lot of these competitors wear masks to protect their identities, and two of those competitors are at the center of this online slot.

You have Taco Malo who wears the red mask and Guacamolio in the purple mask taking each other to task in an action-filled contest.

The Format of the Game

Lucha Libre is a 25-payline game with five reels and three rows. You'll get to choose your coin size from a range of $0.01 to $0.25 apiece, and with all 25 paylines activated, this gives you a betting range of $0.25 to $6.25 per spin.

This is enough to be sufficient for everyone but the highest of rollers, but because of the lack of choosing multiple coins per payline, you're stuck with a somewhat limited number of betting options.

Make sure to keep all paylines activated, even if you have to lower your coin size to have a comfortable bet amount, because playing fewer paylines will deactivate features.

The Wild Wrestler Symbols

The two luchadores Taco Malo and Guacamolio will show up on the middle reel in this game, and they're wild. They always appear stacked, and if they fill up the reel, then they'll trigger a bonus feature.

You can get either a 2x multiplier on all of your wins for that spin, or they'll spread out across adjacent reels to give you chances for several regular-sized wins on the same spin.

While this won't show up quite as often as normal wilds that are spread across all of the reels, it's made up for by the fact that you'll get a lot more value from these wilds than you would with the normal approach.

This is also a refreshing departure from the same old formula being used for wild symbols over and over again.

Regular Payouts

This is a video slot that's dominated by the bonus feature payouts, so the value from the regular paytable is going to seem somewhat limited. There are three ways to win a 1,000x prize, the largest regular win on the paytable.

You can get this with five of the cup trophy, five of the championship belt or five of the announcer symbol on an activated payline. A few other payouts at the 250x level are also available including four of any of these three symbols or five of the match poster.

It's worth noting that the three main symbols also all pay out with just two on a payline for a nice 5x payout that helps to eliminate some of the volatility that comes from limiting the wild symbols.

Two Different Scatter Symbols

You'll find two scattered symbols in Lucha Libre, and they both give great payouts in addition to providing secondary functions based on bonus features. The wrestling ring scatter will give you a 2x win for three, 10x for four, or 200x for five.

These are multiples of your total bet size. The Fiery Mask symbol gets you 1x for two, 2x for three, 5x for four and 25x for five.

You can get paid for fewer symbols, but the payouts themselves are flatter than the wrestling ring. Keep reading to see why.

The Mask of Fiery Doom Feature

You can activate this feature from the free spins (as you'll see below), or you can trigger it by lining up Fiery Masks on the first two reels with wrestlers on the third.

The way this works is that as many as four reels are held completely full of scattered Fiery Mask symbols, and the remaining reels spin to try to pick up more symbols to trigger massive wins.

This is a cool feature that really stresses the importance of the mask in Lucha Libre, and it's nice to see Realtime Gaming incorporate this level of detail into the gameplay for this title.

Choose Your Finishing Move

When three or more of the wrestling ring scatter symbols hit the reels during the regular game, you'll trigger a free spins bonus round. You get to climb to the top rope and choose which of your finishing moves to attempt.

Hitting the move gives you a better bonus round than missing it. Here are the three moves and what you get for hitting or missing them.

The Spanko Special

Hitting this move gains you 14 free spins with a 2x multiplier. Missing it gives you 12 free spins with a 1x multiplier.

The Supremo Foot of Fury

A hit gives 10 free spins with a 2x multiplier and a free Mask of Fiery Doom re-spin. Missing just gives you nine free turns with a simple 1x multiplier.

Thunder Clap Bam Bam.

You'll get six free spins with a 1x multiplier and one free Mask of Fiery Doom re-spin no matter if you hit or miss this move. However, hitting it grants you a second Mask of Fiery Doom re-spin.

Overall Conclusion

Lucha Libre is a great example of Realtime Gaming answering the challenge that critics have given them in the past of not putting out very many new titles and of relying on a somewhat dated portfolio.

This is another example of a recent RTG release that has pushed them back into the limelight in the industry, and because it stays so true to the action and feel of actual Mexican professional wrestling, it holds up as feeling more authentic and less of a caricature.