PDC World Championship Darts 2009 Review

Firstly, I’m a big darts fan. I love watching it on TV, and I love playing it. Whether that’s in the pub, on a console, or on a computer. So it was with eager anticipation I opened the box to PDC World Championship Darts 2009 for the Nintendo DS, I mean, a darts game I can play in the pub without the risk of serious injury after one too many, it seemed like a win-win situation.

Things look good to start with, a rock sound track meets you at the main menu, where you have the options of the type of game you want to play, this can be an exhibition game, a tournament, or a career. There are alsosome ‘party games’, but more about those later. The game is also compatible with the DS wireless link up so you can go head to head with a friend, and you only need one cartridge to do this, which is a bonus. The only downside to the wireless play is that you’re locked to certain famous players. The host will always be Raymond Barneveld and the client will always be Phil Taylor. But that’s not a massive issue.

Once a game type has been selected you then decide on the game rules, consisting of how many players, what type of scoring, 301, 501, 701 with either a normal start, or hit a double score to start. Then onto how many sets and legs, you can have upto 25 sets of up to 25 legs each. A word ofwarning though a 25 set, 25 leg game will take forever. You can also choose a venue, these are spread all over the world and range from Bolton and Dublin to Las Vegas.

In tournament mode there are a few differences to the standard exhibition game. While the scoring and venue selection is the same, the player numbers increase, in this mode you can have up to 5 human players in a total of 32 competitors. There are also several tournament types, ranging from a standard knockout tournament to a full World Championship.

The party games consist of those games played for 'fun', Round the Clock, Black & White, Cricket, and a version of Killer renamed Knockout. All these games have an option to show you the rules and that is where I would recommend you start, as these games hae a very different rule set dependent on which you select. 

The main game mode is the career mode. This is where you pick your darts player and try to become the best in the world. To throw yourdarts you take the stylus, place it where you would like your dart to land, then draw back until the power indicator is in the ‘sweet spot’ indicated on screen. The resulting score is taken away from your starting point of 501 andthe first player to reach 0 by finishing on a double score is the winner of that set, 3 sets make up a leg, and 3 legs are required to win the game. 

The aiming system, while a good idea, is not perfect. It can take several attempts to ‘throw’ your dart, and it’s far too easy to miss the sweet spot on the small DS screen. With practice though, this does get easier, but for a beginner it is just too hard, and could put newer players off. 

The difficulty levels do not seem to be too different, whilethe game claims to offer assistance at lower difficulty levels, I personally found it roughly the same at all levels, once again, something that might put off newer players to the PDC franchise. When the CPU consistently scores over 140 even on easy, there is something amiss. 

Now, it’s not that it’s a bad game, but it isn’t quite enough to be a good game. There are a couple of problems that make it difficult to say it’s a game every DS owner should have, I just can’t recommend this as a good introduction to the genre. The graphics are good, the sound is adequate, but the game falls just short due to the issues with the aiming system, and the difficulty levels lose this game the title of World Champion.