Screenshots :.
Sega Presents: Touch Darts
DS
Matt
28-08-2007
"Playing for anatomy's better than money"
"No jokes about 3 legs here mate"
"Bright, garish colours a new look for darts?"
I haven’t thrown a dart in anger for four years now. In fact, you could hardly say that the last time I threw one was particularly in anger either; running up to interrupt a couple of mates mid-game, yelling ‘bullseye’ and then grabbing a dart and somehow throwing a perfect centre shot kind of made me feel like I should quit while I was ahead. Apart from the odd flirtation with the Bullseye interactive telly quiz game and a rather depressing few minutes spent with an ancient PC darts game that I found on a random compilation CD, I hadn’t stepped up to the oche again until I found myself peering with slight apprehension at my DS screen as Touch Darts loaded.
In theory, darts games should be a boon on the DS. The touch screen is just perfect for careful adjusting of trajectory and power, and as the darts game buried within prior DS release 42 All-Time Classics proved, even getting things there or thereabouts results in an enjoyable experience. Brilliantly, Touch Darts takes the baton on from aforementioned game compendium and runs with it, offering a more simple, instantly intuitive way of scoring those treble twenties and double tops. The top screen is used to show the current score and a few TV shots of the dart board close-up, whilst the bottom provides you with your view of the board and allows you to pick a spot and throw your dart with a mere tap and flick of the stylus.
The rules of darts, for those who’ve never watched telly on a Saturday evening or set foot in a country pub, are remarkably simple. Two players chuck sharpened sticks at a cork target from a distance of around eight feet. The target is divided into twenty separate scoring segments from one point to twenty, each with their own smaller segments for double and treble score bonuses, as well as having two small circles in middle that score 25 and 50 points. Each player starts on 501 or 301 points, and taking it in turns to throw three darts at a time must reduce their score to 0 before the other. The real trick is to work out your points scoring so that you finish by throwing a mandatory double, so just spraying your darts around the board as if you were a member of the Olympic Drunk Archery team is not recommended.
Touch Darts isn’t exactly a serious replication of what was already a tongue-in-cheek sport to begin with. Offering a tournament mode that starts in your garden shed and progresses via your bedroom, a pub, a Scottish hotel and Las Vegas to the final showdown in a plush mansion, numerous opponents are thrown your way. Each of these is typically silly, with early encounters seeing you facing such luminaries as Ricky ‘The Bounce Out’ Hogan and Peter ‘Interesting’ Jones (no sign of Rick ‘Fat’ Smith or Dave ‘Morbidly Obese’ Thompson, then) as you work your way up the ladder to become champion. Doing so will take a fair bit of skill, patience and practice, and with sixteen tournaments of between four and five rounds to work through it’ll take you a fair bit of time too.
When you’re done with all that, there’s a challenge mode to keep you occupied as well. Divided into five chapters of increasing difficulty, it offers ten challenges per chapter that ask the player to do such things as chuck darts into a pair of matching cards, score a certain number of points with a limited amount of darts or go around the clock and hit each scoring segment in turn quicker than a computer opponent manages. The games are by-and-large enjoyable diversions from the proper sport and some of the latter chapters are really quite difficult, so you’ll find yourself once more lost in another section of the game with time whizzing by before you realise it.
The thing that Touch Darts does really well, however, is the one thing it really needed to, i.e. the throwing of the darts. Aiming the crosshair where you want the dart to end up is one thing, but flicking the stylus back-and-forth to get the right power on the throw takes a good deal of skill, and in early stages patience. The great thing is, though, that the more you play the more natural it all becomes. Without really knowing how or why you will find yourself instinctively knowing how to get that crucial leg-ending double top, or being able to get the odd 180 now and again. Not that it ever becomes easy, obviously, but you’ll find yourself concentrating more on score combos than having to worry about each individual throw. It’s fair to say that Touch Darts is probably the first virtual darts title that allows you to feel as if you’re actually getting the scores you think your throws should get.
There are a couple of things that Touch Darts doesn’t carry off so well, though. Firstly, the opponent AI lurches dramatically between being completely inept to being inspired, often leaving you with either an easy cruise to victory or a defeat that you couldn’t have done anything about even if you’d aced everything. For the most part I personally found things a little on the easy side and as such managed to complete the Tournament mode within a day or so having only lost a handful of matches, with the majority of those being down to my inability to hit a game-closing double. Now, I’ve never actually won a game of real darts in my life and would probably be more likely to throw one into my own foot than hit a treble twenty, so although the winning feeling I got was rather welcome, it did come a little too easily.
The other thing that Touch Darts lets itself down on is presentation. The colourful cartoon graphics are pleasant enough, but the sound effects repeat themselves a heck of a lot and soon practically beg you to set your DS to mute. In latter tournaments, a Sid Waddell look-alike provides text commentary on the upper screen, but sadly lacks any kind of humorous quips and soon also becomes rather annoying to have to look at. Whilst nothing the game throws at you will leave you weeping in a twitching pile with your shattered DS yards from you, it’s fair to say that a bit of sound variety and a lot less annoying text commentary would have improved the show. Oh, and whilst we’re talking of improving the show, how’s about including a Wi-Fi multiplayer mode next time guys, rather than having to rely on people sharing their DS?
Still, it’s hard not to think of Touch Darts without a grin on your face. It’s English in the most stereotypical way possible, but it’s done with a dash of humour and will have darts fans and darts newcomers alike having the occasional smile at some of the venues or opponents you come across. The actual darts part of the game is also pleasingly put together, and the sense of satisfaction as you gradually begin to hit your marks with more consistency is actually pretty huge. There may not be too much to it, and what’s there may be slightly swamped under some annoying sound effects and the like, but if you’re looking for a way of playing the sport without having to deal with stumbling drunkards or conversations about the plight of West Ham going on behind you then this is your best bet.
In theory, darts games should be a boon on the DS. The touch screen is just perfect for careful adjusting of trajectory and power, and as the darts game buried within prior DS release 42 All-Time Classics proved, even getting things there or thereabouts results in an enjoyable experience. Brilliantly, Touch Darts takes the baton on from aforementioned game compendium and runs with it, offering a more simple, instantly intuitive way of scoring those treble twenties and double tops. The top screen is used to show the current score and a few TV shots of the dart board close-up, whilst the bottom provides you with your view of the board and allows you to pick a spot and throw your dart with a mere tap and flick of the stylus.
The rules of darts, for those who’ve never watched telly on a Saturday evening or set foot in a country pub, are remarkably simple. Two players chuck sharpened sticks at a cork target from a distance of around eight feet. The target is divided into twenty separate scoring segments from one point to twenty, each with their own smaller segments for double and treble score bonuses, as well as having two small circles in middle that score 25 and 50 points. Each player starts on 501 or 301 points, and taking it in turns to throw three darts at a time must reduce their score to 0 before the other. The real trick is to work out your points scoring so that you finish by throwing a mandatory double, so just spraying your darts around the board as if you were a member of the Olympic Drunk Archery team is not recommended.
Touch Darts isn’t exactly a serious replication of what was already a tongue-in-cheek sport to begin with. Offering a tournament mode that starts in your garden shed and progresses via your bedroom, a pub, a Scottish hotel and Las Vegas to the final showdown in a plush mansion, numerous opponents are thrown your way. Each of these is typically silly, with early encounters seeing you facing such luminaries as Ricky ‘The Bounce Out’ Hogan and Peter ‘Interesting’ Jones (no sign of Rick ‘Fat’ Smith or Dave ‘Morbidly Obese’ Thompson, then) as you work your way up the ladder to become champion. Doing so will take a fair bit of skill, patience and practice, and with sixteen tournaments of between four and five rounds to work through it’ll take you a fair bit of time too.
When you’re done with all that, there’s a challenge mode to keep you occupied as well. Divided into five chapters of increasing difficulty, it offers ten challenges per chapter that ask the player to do such things as chuck darts into a pair of matching cards, score a certain number of points with a limited amount of darts or go around the clock and hit each scoring segment in turn quicker than a computer opponent manages. The games are by-and-large enjoyable diversions from the proper sport and some of the latter chapters are really quite difficult, so you’ll find yourself once more lost in another section of the game with time whizzing by before you realise it.
The thing that Touch Darts does really well, however, is the one thing it really needed to, i.e. the throwing of the darts. Aiming the crosshair where you want the dart to end up is one thing, but flicking the stylus back-and-forth to get the right power on the throw takes a good deal of skill, and in early stages patience. The great thing is, though, that the more you play the more natural it all becomes. Without really knowing how or why you will find yourself instinctively knowing how to get that crucial leg-ending double top, or being able to get the odd 180 now and again. Not that it ever becomes easy, obviously, but you’ll find yourself concentrating more on score combos than having to worry about each individual throw. It’s fair to say that Touch Darts is probably the first virtual darts title that allows you to feel as if you’re actually getting the scores you think your throws should get.
There are a couple of things that Touch Darts doesn’t carry off so well, though. Firstly, the opponent AI lurches dramatically between being completely inept to being inspired, often leaving you with either an easy cruise to victory or a defeat that you couldn’t have done anything about even if you’d aced everything. For the most part I personally found things a little on the easy side and as such managed to complete the Tournament mode within a day or so having only lost a handful of matches, with the majority of those being down to my inability to hit a game-closing double. Now, I’ve never actually won a game of real darts in my life and would probably be more likely to throw one into my own foot than hit a treble twenty, so although the winning feeling I got was rather welcome, it did come a little too easily.
The other thing that Touch Darts lets itself down on is presentation. The colourful cartoon graphics are pleasant enough, but the sound effects repeat themselves a heck of a lot and soon practically beg you to set your DS to mute. In latter tournaments, a Sid Waddell look-alike provides text commentary on the upper screen, but sadly lacks any kind of humorous quips and soon also becomes rather annoying to have to look at. Whilst nothing the game throws at you will leave you weeping in a twitching pile with your shattered DS yards from you, it’s fair to say that a bit of sound variety and a lot less annoying text commentary would have improved the show. Oh, and whilst we’re talking of improving the show, how’s about including a Wi-Fi multiplayer mode next time guys, rather than having to rely on people sharing their DS?
Still, it’s hard not to think of Touch Darts without a grin on your face. It’s English in the most stereotypical way possible, but it’s done with a dash of humour and will have darts fans and darts newcomers alike having the occasional smile at some of the venues or opponents you come across. The actual darts part of the game is also pleasingly put together, and the sense of satisfaction as you gradually begin to hit your marks with more consistency is actually pretty huge. There may not be too much to it, and what’s there may be slightly swamped under some annoying sound effects and the like, but if you’re looking for a way of playing the sport without having to deal with stumbling drunkards or conversations about the plight of West Ham going on behind you then this is your best bet.
7/10