8.2

Starring even more Champions, the full line up of electrifying tournaments, exceptional graphic enhancements, even more play modes and additional formats - PDC World Championship Darts is back for 2008. Calling on darts, sports and PS2 fans, PDC World Championship Darts 2008 is bringing the spectacle and excitement of the nation’s best loved sport to your home.

Darts is very rarely developed into a video game and even when it is it’s usually as an add on to some other game so it’s nice to see a game not only dedicated to what is a fantastic and highly supported sport, but to see that it has been made so well. The game has many modes to choose from including quick game where you can choose to play a game of 301, 501 or 701, tournament mode where you take on the world’s best darts players to win the PDC and career mode which includes a detailed character editor to make your player however you want him to look. There are also multiplayer options which include simply playing a game head to head or competing in one of several party games, similar in style to mini games on the Wii but without motion sensing.

Graphically the game is as good as your going to get considering there isn’t really much for the developers to create. All the real life PDC champions are brought to life in the game and look very realistic, the playing arena looks as it should and all the menus have been produced to a high quality so you’ll never get lost. Commentary is provided by darts’ Sid Waddell and Russ Bray which is a nice touch at first but quickly becomes annoying as they only have a limited amount of lines of dialogue. 

The controls are some of the best I’ve ever seen in a darts game with several difficulty modes letting you work your way up to throwing without any visual aids. Throwing your darts is done by selecting a marker on the board and then moving your analogue stick back and forth to pull back your arm then throw the dart forward. In the easier difficulty levels, you are told how far to do each but as you progress you can increase your difficulty and turn this feature off. All in all this is the best darts representation to date and is highly recommended for fans of the sport but anyone else will be quickly bored.