When I first heard of the PDC World Darts Championship game for the iPhone, I was really looking forward to seeing the game hit the App Store. I like a game of darts in real life when I ‘m in a pub or restaurant that ‘s got a board, and I have tried several darts games for the iPhone, including one I like very much.
This one offers a lot of very fancy features and claims to be ‘the finest darts game to come to the iPhone and iPod Touch ‘. I ‘ve spent a little while with the game and have ended up titling this a ‘Quick Look ‘ because I just don ‘t like it much at all, and don ‘t plan to spend any more time with it.
Here are some of the features of the game, as per its App Store description:
- Official PDC World Darts Championship Game
- Take on the world ‘s best darts players, including 14 time World Champion Phil ‘The Power ‘ Taylor, James Wade, John Part, and many more.
- Tournament and Quick Game modes, including popular pub games like Clock, Turbo, Cricket and Killer.
- Present throughout is THE word on world darts, the legendary ‘voice of darts ‘, Sid Waddell.
- 3 different tournaments
- Top 10 PDC darts players
- Intuitive accelerometer dart throwing mechanic focusing on the skill of the player
All but the last of those features seem pretty well executed within the app. Unfortunately, that last feature is the one that is most essential to having a good experience with the game.
Your mileage may vary of course, but for me the actual dart throwing ‘mechanic ‘ is horrendously awkward to deal with. It ‘s so awkward that it took me a fair while to even manage to get a throw off at the outset “ and I still found myself failing to complete a throw maybe one out of every four times even after about an hour ‘s use.
Here is a screencap of the ‘Controls ‘ section of the game ‘s Help area:
I have a few problems with this method. Firstly, why use the accelerometer to so big a degree? I can see how that works well for some first-person-shooter games, or racing games, and various other types “ but for darts, it doesn ‘t seem appropriate at all. Even when I ‘ve had several beers, I don ‘t tend to be ducking and dodging around when getting ready to throw.
The bigger issue though is the app ‘s inability to consistently recognize the flick forward motion it suggests using to complete a throw. It seems to require some very specific form of tap, hold, and flick – one that is beyond my current ability to recreate very often, at least while also trying to keep my aim true by tilting the device.
To say that the controls feel unnatural would be a large understatement.
My feeling on this game is that too much attention was devoted to the branding and ‘glitz ‘ elements, and not enough to the playability of it. Sure, it looks like a lot of fun to choose which top player to be, and have a ‘legendary ‘ dude providing play-by-play and all that. But if the actual ‘play ‘ piece of things is not at all intuitive or easy to use, none of those things have any impact anyway.
You can find PDC World Darts Championship in the App Store now, priced at $4.99.
*** I-Play provided a promo code to Just Another iPhone Blog for the review of PDC World Darts Championship. For further information regarding our site review policies please see our "About" page
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