Blade

In my opinion, the three Blade movies achieve the following ratings: “Good”, “Outstanding”, and “I Want My Two Hours Of Life Back”. This game by Cryptologic, which is based on the original Marvel comic strip rather than the movies, achieves my simple AWESOME rating.

In case you haven't either seen one of the movies, caught an episode of the ill-fated television show (it wasn't up to the standard of the films), or read the simply mind blowingly good comic books, Blade is a saga about a vampire hunter. His mother was bitten while he was in the womb, rendering him immune to the vampire bite himself, but imbuing him with all of a vampire's powers of strength, speed and virtual immortality. Plus he can walk in the daylight.

Cryptologic's adaptation is a visually beautiful five reel video slot game. It pays out on a conservative 9 pay lines, which players can use to increase their chances of winning on a single spin if they want to play more than just the centre line. 

On the reels you can expect to see all kinds of creepiness associated with vampire hunting. We've got crosses. We've got spinning blades. We've got steel spikes for staking guys through the heart. We've got automatic weapons filled with silver bullets tipped with garlic. Entirely awesome stuff all round.

Blade himself is the wild symbol. If he appears appears in a strategic position, he can be used to plug a hole in a combination that would otherwise win.

There's also a cool free spins feature in this game. If you get a Vampire logo in anywhere in reels 1 and 5 at the same time as there's a Blade logo anywhere in reel 3, you automatically win 5 free spins, but they're not ordinary spins. During your freebies, reel 3 becomes all Blades, so your chances getting winning combos is much higher than usual.

Blade takes coins from 1c up to $5, and the highest possible jackpot is 8,000 coins, which at maximum bet is $40,000 – a pretty neat amount of cash if you ask me. 

But that's not all, because this game has three progressive jackpots running on it all the time. I have no idea at all what triggers them – it could be anything at all. In fact I've heard of people winning some of the biggest progressives on this game when they just lost a normal spin, so you really never know.

The smallest of the three progressives seeds from $50, the next from $500, and the largest from $5,000, so it's worth your while checking this game out!

Please note: The existing agreement between Playtech and Marvel for the licensing of Marvel brands for Playtech games has ended.​ From 1st April 2017 this game will no longer be available.