Written by: Mark

 

 

 

In recent years darts has become increasingly popular as a televised spectator sport, in particular the 'Professional Darts Corporation' (PDC) due to the massive influx of televised tournaments and recognisable players.

 

In 2008 Oxygen Interactive released a game to capitalise on the sports success and the uniqueness on the Nintendo Wii’s controls which should have mimicked the darting action superbly. However the game ended up being pretty poorly received with a very difficult learning curve and inconsistent controls.

 

Fast forward one year to 2009 and Oxygen Interactive return with a sequel which promises a number of changes to improve the overall game including subtle gameplay improvements, more players and most importantly an improved control system.

 

But have these improvements made enough of a positive step forward to warrant a purchase of PDC World Championship Darts 2009 ?

 

 

Lets start the review by looking at what is the most important thing about the game…the controls. Undoubtedly where the 2008 version of the game failed was due to the very inconsistent controls which if I’m honest never gave the impression that the player was in total control of the action and more often than not the dart never achieved it’s intended target. The developers must have realised this and in the 2009 version have worked hard to implement desired changes.

 

 

The way in which the dart is thrown is still the same in that the Wiimote is held the same as a player would hold a dart and the same throwing action is used only with the A button released at the same point as a player would release a dart from his/her hand. Although this represents the sport pretty well it never gives a massive sense of realism, despite this the game works far better than the previous version and the inclusion of the assist gauge certainly makes the game more easily accessible to players of all abilities.

 

 

In PDC 2009 the developers have included almost all of the official PDC tournaments which can be played in using the games career mode. In this mode the player can either use their own created player of choose one of the eighteen PDC professional players and take them through the tournaments to progress to become world number one.

 

It must be said that the career mode is pretty enjoyable although the create a player tool is the one area where the game has not really developed and still remains fairly poor. This is mainly due to the lack of customisable options which means that you cannot really get much of a likeness to yourself unlike many other games currently available. In addition are the lack of options to select darts and flights. Call me picky but I am partial to playing a real game of darts myself so it would have been nice to have been given more choice of darts instead of just light, medium and heavy.