I have returned from my mini-vacation, which explains the lack of post yesterday. It was fun, except for me underestimating the power of the sun even with an umbrella. One night, we hit up a casino. I'm not a big gambler, but I try and get my monies worth out of the place. While walking the aisles, I cam across a Lord of the Rings slot machine.
Much like how people are drawn to the ring of power, I had to check this sucker out. I sat down and gave it $10. As expected, I was down to $0 a few minutes later, but it was an interesting experience.
It was actually very game-like. It tracked your progress through Mordor and had a number of 'maps.' Since it used the casino's reward card system, it actually saved your progress. I don't have a card, but it would have saved it.
The game itself was one of those crazy things that shows 16 symbols on the screen at a time. I had no idea what would actually win. Much like many MMO's we know, it also had its own currency system. Spins were done using credits, the minimum bet was 40. It took me a while of looking around the screen to find that a credit was set to 2 cents (easily adjustable I'm sure). So each spin was actually 80 cents.
Also like games, I actually won a lot. A whole lot of 15 and 30 credit wins... but that doesn't include the original bet. In actuality I was still losing but at a slower rate. That's cool though, I was really just looking for a time waster. I do think it is weak, a win should be a real win.
Another aspect that was similar to games is that there were skills to use. I think there were 5 'power-ups' in total. I never did get any to use, but they affected things like the payout, wild symbols and so on.
It was an interesting experience. I was actually up around $8 at one point. Not sure why, a bunch of stuff happened and it said I won a lot. That was gone very quickly though. I did find it a lot more fun than the standard slot machines.
