Published on 7th September 2013 by Becky Mosley

 With its progressive jackpot still lingering around the £3,500,000 mark, you might think that Microgaming’s The Dark Knight slot machine game was untouchable. However, due to its popularity, Microgaming has launched the follow on to their Batman themed hit, The Dark Knight Rises, based on the third Batman movie in Christopher Nolan’s film franchise. Instead of The Joker this movie and slot sees Batman battle it out against Bane. The most interesting new feature of this Microgaming release is the free spins round. The free spins round will be triggered when a player lands 3 timed bombs anywhere on the reels, but that isn’t the great part. The great part occurs totally at random. When playing The Dark Knight Rises, Batman and Bane could come across the screen at any time after a spin, fighting and brawling. As they do so, free spins and/or multipliers are added to tally bars above the reels. These will be accumulated all along, and when the player does trigger the free spins round, they must choose from either Bane or Batman, with each offering unique perks for their free spins round. Another handy new feature for the franchise is the split icons. Occasionally, and at random, the icons on the reels will reshuffle and find themselves in entirely new positions. This helps the player win with icons on paylines they have already lost on, and is similar in a fashion to the kind of avalanche feature in some slots. It must be understood that unlike its predecessor, The Dark Knight Rises in not a progressive jackpot slot, although it does contain a 243 ways to win feature. Special mention should go of the audio as always and of course the free spins accumulator, the Dark Knight Rises icon, the expanding wild on the third reel and the split and shuffle feature. If anybody thought Microgaming would not be able to outdo themselves with this sequel, they were wrong. The Dark Knight Rises has been launched this week in any top Microgaming powered online casino.