Oct 23, 2007

After the iffy darts minigame in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, the market has been wide open for a decent darts game on Wii. And this might just be it. PDC World Championship Darts 2008 features 16 professional darts players and their likenesses (although several are said to have asked for a few pounds to be shaved off their virtual selves, so they may be slimmer than you remember) along with facial and body motion-capture. The result is a pleasantly realistic representation of the sport, as we found out when we had a hands-on playtest with near-finished code.

But what we didn't expect was the game to feature what looks like a tiny mug shot of O J Simpson next to the players' names in the 'Killer' mode. It's nice to see a sports sim with a sense of humour (let's put taste aside for now) and there are some witty remarks offered by Sid Waddell, which also lends more authenticity to the proceedings.

Apparently many of Sid's comments that were ad-libbed during voice recording were too colourful to include - we think they should have stayed in. An 18-rated darts game would probably rock. But no, this is family-friendly fun all the way.