Football: Champions Cup

Now it's time to lace up your football boots, adjust your shin pads, and get ready for a totally awesome match! Three cheers for football, which is always au courant, and for NetEnt, which is loading us up for the European Football Championship 2016—as it does—in this new slot. Until June, when we all, presumably, join Boot Camp for the European Championship, this is the game to play if you, like us, are fans of anything resembling the "chess of the green grass."

An obvious choice for the football fan

Choosing new slot machines is often a thematic decision for us. We at casinos-online.pro have certainly been around long enough to know that the theme is not everything. Behind the stupidest facade can hide a seven-health game with tight winning chances and exciting features. But in the end, it's always more fun to play a slot machine with a theme that appeals to you. With the European Championship approaching, now seems the perfect time to bet on a slot machine that has as its theme the world's most popular sport.

Bonus games with exciting penalty shootouts

Everyone knows the sensation of horror, mixed delight, and a penalty shootout. All except for our younger readers should definitely remember New Zealand playing against Romania in the World Cup '94. After repeated attempts, goalkeeper Ravelli carried the team to the semifinals. They dug for gold but definitely settled for a great bronze medal finish. In Heroes of Football: The Champions Cup, however, we have reason to hope again for a rain of gold.

You activate the bonus game by obtaining 3 or more bonus symbols anywhere on the reels. The game itself, seemingly, is what they call a "Pick and Click" function; you can't fail to notice that resembles practically every function of its kind for the last 20 years or so. You're prompted to make a decision, after which something happens on screen. If you make the right decision, you're rewarded by being told that you've made the right decision. If you make a poor decision, you're told you should have made a better one.

Free Spin Tournament

The feature of the game that is most obviously tied to football is the freespin feature. This becomes active when 3 or more gold trophies appear on the reels. You then go to a different screen, which is styled as the playoff tournament of the European Championship, not unlike the setup you might see for a game in the real-world counterpart. You can achieve 4 freespin rounds at most. During each round, your team is like a player in the tournament, and they score if you land any wild symbols that are colored like your team. If wild symbols are colored like the opposing team instead, they score, and in this random event, you have to hope your team is not the one on the receiving end. If you place on any of the podiums afterward, you get a nice little extra that doubles the amount you would ordinarily receive for wilds. And you can also receive wilds at this point.

Overlay Wilds and regular wilds

During the base game, Overlay Wilds may land in random positions and in numbers of between 2 and 5. They cannot land on wild symbols that are regular, scatter symbols, or bonus symbols.

A wild symbol is also a regular feature. Just like we are used to, this one performs the function of a "joker" in that it can substitute for all other symbols with the exception of scattering and bonus symbols. Wilds can also pay out some decent winnings on their own-up to 2000 times the bet!

Overall rating of Football: Champions Cup

Currently, there are a few slot machines based on the football theme (like Shoot! by Microgaming), but it's great to see that even NetEnt has decided to create a game around this theme. As per their usual M.O., they have crafted a really nice gaming experience with lots of special features and fun gameplay. The only complaint we could really come up with is that maybe the whole thing could have been a little classier, but that is really just nitpicking.