Darts is a sport that can be played by pretty much anyone, which makes it instantly accessible, and it can be quite entertaining to watch on TV, especially a tournament final, which can be a really exciting and tense experience. The question is, can you truly recreate the same feeling of tension in a videogame? Mere Mortals have had a good go at it and in some ways they have succeeded.

One of the most important things to note about PDC World Championship Darts 2008 is that it has a really good control scheme. Although everybody seems to be doing it these days, Mere Mortals has taken a leaf out of EA's book entitled '100 ways to utilise the right analogue stick in a different way', so the left stick aims your targeting reticule and the right stick controls your player's throwing arm. Pulling back on the right stick pulls your arm back and raises the power bar, then pushing it forward throws the dart. In order to throw your dart where you want it to go though, you must hit the sweet spot on the power bar when you pull your arm back, which is indicated by a dart in the bottom left corner of the screen. The thing about this, however, is that the sweet spot moves depending on where on the board you are aiming; for example, if you are aiming for the top of the board then you have to let the power bar get further back than you would if you were aiming at the bottom. It's a nice, simple mechanic and it works rather well.

There are three difficulty levels in PDC; Amateur is the one I've described above, then in Pro, the next one up, the power gauge is taken away, leaving you to try and work out your throw for yourself. Finally is Master difficulty, in which there's no power gauge and the reticule is smaller, making it even more difficult to get that nine dart finish. I definitely recommend playing this game on either the Pro or Master difficulty though, as Amateur is just too easy and the overall gameplay is far more realistic on Pro or Master.

There are a variety of different game modes on offer, starting with your basic exhibition match, in which you can select the type of game out of 301, 501, or 701, and the number of sets and legs. Then you have Tournament mode, which lets you choose one of several different tournaments to play in. For the times when you have friends over, you have the Party mode, which has every kind of variation of darts that you can think of, including Cricket and Shanghai, which have nothing to do with the usual way to play darts but are still fun nevertheless. Of all the mini-games though, the main one that most people will be familiar with is Around the Clock, in which you start off on the number one and work your way around the dartboard in numerical order, all the way up to twenty, and once you've hit the twenty you must nail the bullseye to win. All are equally as fun as the next but they'll only keep you amused for a while before you want to get back to playing the main game.

Of all the game modes, the main attraction is the Career mode, in which you play through a whole season of darts, playing exhibition matches and small tournaments until you are ranked high enough to be eligible for the seven major tournaments. You earn prize money for every win, which will also determine your rank and allow you to get to these bigger events. You can choose to play as one of the pros that are already in the game, which alters where you are in the rankings, or you can start from scratch and create your own character and customise his or her throwing technique or darts. Unfortunately this really is a letdown, because in PDC it's not so much character creation as pick 'n' mix from the characters already in the game. For example, I created my own character and started a Career mode, then the first person I had a match with had exactly the same face as my created character, with the only difference being that he had a different shirt on. I can't help but think that the developers were a little lazy here and that the experience would have benefited more from a Saints Row or Tiger Woods style slider mechanic for character creation.

Another major flaw is that once you have thrown your first dart there's no need to re-aim the reticule, so you can hit the same spot again and again and not once will your dart hit another dart and bounce out. The whole time I played this game, not once did I have a dart so much as hit the wire and bounce onto the floor, which really does lower the realism a lot, considering that it's portraying a game in which millimetres count and could cost you a match.

Graphically, PDC 08 doesn't really push the boat out, either. Being a port from the PS2 version of the game, it looks as though it's only had a slight revamp for its Xbox 360 outing, with visuals being only marginally better than its last-gen brethren. At least a few new animations have been added, which can only be a good thing. The sounds in the game aren't too bad - the darts hitting the board and the crowd cheering - with referee Bruce Spendley and his trademark shouting of the scores also present and correct. What brings the audio down a peg or two though is commentator Sid Waddell's awful voiceover; he never seems to comment on what's actually happening in the match, just rambling on with none of his trademark charm showing at all. When you've just thrown a one hundred and eighty on master difficulty and all the TV's voice of darts can say is, "It's packed in here, you couldn't even swing a badger", you know it's time to switch the commentator volume down to zero.

PDC 08 does have online multiplayer, with exhibition matches and party matches to play via Xbox live, although due to the limited appeal of the game and the proliferation of shooters and racers on Xbox 360, it can be hard to find any matches to play, so really you're better off playing with friends who've come over to your place than trying to find another gamer online.

PDC World Championship Darts 2008 isn't a bad game; the gameplay is reasonable and the dart throwing mechanic couldn't possibly be fine-tuned any more, but it's overshadowed by a number of flaws and indeed the limited appeal of a darts game. This isn't the kind of game that rises above its station to attract new fans; if you enjoy darts in real life then you're likely to have some fun with PDC 08, but if you don't then there are many, many more enjoyable and better looking games out there. Let's just hope that if there's a 2009 release then the developer irons out the gameplay issues and updates the presentation because, as it stands, I'd rather go to the pub to play darts than play this.

Reviewed by Graham Hill for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).