Taco Brothers Saving Christmas Slot

Those 3 handsome Mexican brothers are back in action, and still fighting against that evil Captain Diaz, if you can call him evil, that is, just for wanting to steal all of the tacos from the brothers? Hmm. I guess this Captain Diaz has already got more than enough money in his vault, but his stomach must be forever empty. So, rather than letting the nice local Mexican neighbourhood enjoy their tacos at Christmas, he wants to enjoy it all for himself, or rather, all for his stomach. To prevent this from happening, the 3 Taco brothers, Paso, Pepe and Pico, decides to break Captain Diaz's safes instead, maybe to prevent him from buying all the tacos, or to use that money as ransom, in return for all the stolen tacos? Hmm, whatever. Only Elk Studios know better.

If you've played the earlier Taco Brothers game before, then this game would be about the same, with nice graphics and handsome lovable Taco brothers. Maybe this game was designed more for the gals, I really don't know. The logo 'Taco Brothers' is the Wild symbol, appearing only on reels 2 and 4, but doesn't pay for itself, doesn't double any wins with it, doesn't become stacked or expanded, but only substitute for other symbols except the Safe Scatter symbol. Oh boy, what a dumb Wild symbol this is. Getting the Wild symbol on both reels 2 and 4 at the same time triggers 1 Respin, for a second chance to get new wins, or try to get those 3 Safe Scatter symbols to trigger the Wild Escape Bonus game, which is actually the Free Spins game. Nope, those Safe Scatter symbols don't pay for themselves either, they only appear on reels 1, 3 and 5, so you know what they are, right? Yeah, dumb symbols. And if you think 2 dumb symbols should be enough, you're wrong! There's a third dumb symbol in this game, the most I've ever come across in any game so far. The Bell is also a Wild symbol, 5 of which pays 80x the total bet, and only does substitution for other symbols except for the 'Taco Brothers' Wild and the Safe Scatter symbols. Oh gees! At least this third dumb symbol pays something for itself! Paso pays 400x, Pepe pays 300x, Pico pays 100x, and all the other symbols pay 80x, all per line bet for 5 of each kind. The paytable? Blardy damn low!

In the Wild Escape Bonus game, the 3 brothers become Running Wild symbols, appearing one at a time, starting at row 3, then at row 2 and finally at row 1. Each Running Wild will move one step to the left on each free spin, until it goes off the reel, or get caught by Captain Diaz appearing anywhere on the reels. Oh gees! But the appearance of Senorita anywhere on the reels will unlock the caught Wild symbol and restart the other Running Wild, if any. Sounds complicated right? Hmm, in a way, yes, but if you can picture the game Invisible Man, then the Running Wild symbol here plays in about the same way too, going from right to left. The game ends when all 3 Taco brothers have left the reels, or all get caught out by the evil Captain Diaz.

The gameplay is quite interesting, I must admit, but looking at the sort of payouts it gave me, it makes me swoon in disappointment. All the wins were so blardy low! The Free Spins games gave 5 times of the 1x multiplier, only 1 time of the 2x multiplier, and none of the 3x multiplier. From 6 Free Spins games that I got, all paid from 9x to 25x my bet amount, with only one win of 36x. Argh! With such a very low paytable, I shouldn't have played this game at all, but my fingers got itchy and wanted to give it a try. Well, this once shall be enough for a lifetime!

There has been an almost unbelievable number of new christmas themed slots this year, most of them as predictable and cheesy as they come. Games like Secrets of Xmas from NetEnt and Holiday Season from Play N Go are all well and good I suppose, but it's nice to see ELK Studios doing something a little bit different with the festive spirit in this new slot machine.

I love the look of Taco Brothers - Saving Christmas, with its huge reels that take up almost the entire screen and move with awesome smoothness. The presentation of this game is up there with the very best any developer has to offer, which is a credit to ELK Studios being that they are still a minor player in the online casino world. I thought the user interface was very good too, particularly when I tried the game on my tablet. As with all of ELK's games, you can play this slot on any device using the same user interface. I think the company has done a really good job of creating a universal set of buttons and controls and unlike many other providers who do this, I didn't find it odd playing this game with a mouse on my regular laptop.

The main bonus round is really exciting and seems to have a lot of big win potential. As far as I understand it though a "jackpot spin" returns only 1,500x your total stake, which isn't actually all that impressive. In this particular game I don't think that is the end of the world though, because it should be possible to score several high paying spins in a row if the three Taco Brothers manage to arrange themselves correctly during the feature. I love the fact the bonus restarts if one of the brothers bumps into Señorita, which seems to happen much more often than a regular retrigger on any other slot.

I enjoy the majority of 243 way slot machines, but as with so many games of this type the paytable does at first seem a little bit stingy. The top five of a kind combination only returns quadruple your stake, which is really quite shocking actually.

The included "Betting Strategies" are a total joke and should be avoided at all costs. These basically let you double down on your stake if you lose five spins in a row, or other such ridiculous automated methods for altering the size of your stake in accordance with previous results. Not only is this scientifically garbage when playing a random slot, but as my boyfriend put it, who on earth thought it was a good idea to include an automated way of increasing your bet to chase your losses?!

Very few christmas themed slots are actually genuine new releases, instead most are simply clones of existing games given a little sprinkling of glitter and red to make them appear somewhat more festive. As far as I can tell that is all that has happened with this new variant of Taco Brothers too, so if you didn't enjoy the original game then you will probably want to give this one a miss.