PDC World Darts Championship

Two thoughts might occur to the uninitiated mobile gamer when confronted with knowledge of a darts title. Are we expected to throw darts at the handset, and are we expected to throw the handset at a target? Of course, PDC World Darts Championship expects you to perform neither of these phone-destroying actions, but that doesn't mean you won't be tempted to hurl your handset at the wall as the game gets going.

The developers have really gone all out to make PDC World Darts Championship as comprehensive as possible, including licensed appearances of almost every professional darts athlete currently on the circuit.

Which means this is about as complete a darts game as we're likely to see for quite a long time. It's not a sport that offers a great deal of variety and intrigue for a video game conversion, but the developers can't be accused of taking it easy on themselves. The effort that's been made to create a faithful representation of the professional darts circuit is considerable, and PDC World Darts Championship feels bigger and bolder for it.

A tournament takes you through three venues – the Las Vegas Desert Classic, the UK Open Darts Championship and, of course, the PDC World Darts Championship. As you work your way through your opponents, they don't immediately feel to be on a sliding difficulty scale, which might be a tad unusual for a video game but holds true to the professional sporting tournament as it would be in real life. You could come up against the best early on, or a seasoned player could be thwarted by a lucky newcomer.

Naturally, no amount of licensing or realism matters if the dart-throwing gameplay isn't up to scratch. The large number of darts games out there have tested a huge number of methods for adding skill to a virtual throw, with varying success and failure.

PDC World Darts Championship isn't one of the best. Your sight is placed as near to the target (usually the triple-20) as possible, and then proceeds to waver randomly about that area.

A fast-fluctuating circle zooms in and out with your sight at its centre, and hitting the action button as the circle zooms all the way into the sight marker ensures the dart lands at that exact position. Throwing when the fluctuating circle is zoomed out decreases the accuracy of the shot, however, so it's as much about timing as it is about aiming.

But the more you hunt around for a decent aim, the more the sight wavers, so an unsteady hand perpetuates bad throwing. Getting straight to the target and throwing your dart seems to be the best method for accuracy, which in itself works quite well.

There's one small additional mechanic to this otherwise decent system that throws the whole game off, however. Take too long to throw (and we're talking a matter of a few seconds here), and your famous player releases the dart regardless.

Perhaps it's true that a seasoned darts player learns that standing and aiming for too long is counterproductive to a good shot, but neither is darts a time sensitive game. This element of throwing forces you to rush each and every shot, which in turn breeds contempt for accuracy and aim – the two aspects you'd expect to employ to get a dart where it's going.

This isn't entirely dissimilar to Player One's other darts games, Phil Taylor's Power Darts, but the time limit and excessive shaking of the central target don't call on skill, but chance - and the inaccessibility of such a factor makes PDC World Darts Championship's controls a severely fallible system.

The computer controlled players aren't perfect, but neither do they suffer from three random gameplay mechanics pulling against each other to deliberately make your shots go wide. PDC World Darts Championship doesn't use a system that requires skill to master so much as one that deliberately attempts to throw you off target, and that's deeply frustrating even in quick matches.

There are several game modes, which initially appear to help you refine your command of this haphazard control system, such as Tournament, Quickmatch, Clock Turbo, Killer and Cricket, but what they really teach you is that playing darts outside in a gale is unproductive. And this isn't really something that improves with the pass-to-play multiplayer option, since all it really does is increase the number of humans it can irritate during a single leg of darts.

It's a genuine shame, as with a bit of leniency this comprehensive darts game could really take the lead in this prolific sub-genre. But unless you really need to see professional names on the scoreboard (above your own), there are several more intuitive and accessible darts games in the mobile market right now.