DevilDarts by Jason
Kravitz, Price: $9
Reviewed April 2003
Sure you’ve played a few darts games
in your life, but you’ve never been paired up against
these devils until you play DevilDarts! Developed by Jason
Kravitz, DevilDarts puts a devilish twist on your ordinary
darts game where you must beat six of the best devil-looking
darts fiends, most of them with deadly accuracy.
Each darts sim game has its own way of
re-creating the game experience digitally; DevilDarts achieves
this with two steps. On the first game screen below the large
dartboard, you will see player’s standing position.
You can line up the player’s throwing hand to where
you want the dart to land on the board. On the second screen,
you will need to hit both the power meter and the angle meter
at the right moment to give the velocity and angle you wish
to have on the dart in order to hit certain mark on the board.
As any veteran darts player can tell you, it’s not
hard to hit certain mark once in a while, but it’s
hard to hit every count and mark constantly. The games included
in DevilDarts are Cricket and On One (with 301, 501 or 701
options). If you are new to the game of darts, you can read
the help file on the rules or look on the web for more detailed
game rules.
You can control the game by either the
stylus or the hardware buttons. I found the hardware buttons
make it much easier to pinpoint my mark as well as hitting
the power and angle meters. The AI of the opponents feels
right on target. The more you advance in the game the harder
your opponents are to beat, and Pluto M.D. is almost impossible
to beat if you don’t have a steady hand and a lot of
luck.
In addition to the cartoon-ish devil darters,
the graphics are nicely designed as well. With the help of
animation, you are able to see the motion of dart throwing
and the flight of the dart. The fact that you can change
the background scene of the throwing window is just one more
thing to make this game fun to play.
The sound effects and background tracks
are plentiful and creative. The background tracks are relaxing
New-Age tunes and if you hit a triple, a voice will cry out: “Triple!” The
game runs well on both ARM and Xscale devices, and it also
supports MIPS.
While the game could use more darts
games, Cricket and On One should keep most of the casual
darts sim players happy. The game makes it very easy to
keep playing and trying to win. I’ve had some lucky
runs but lost plenty of times to the dart devils. After
hours of playing, I realized that loosing might not be
such a bad idea. To quote one of my favorite dart devils
Orobas: “If I wanted to lose, I’d throw darts
at your head.” So, are you going to crack your knuckles
and stand up to them or are you going to run from fear? |
