Darts, as a game in the real world, got old fast as a kid and soon I was more interested in what a sharp, weighted and aerodynamically shaped object could do when thrown with great force at other objects. My sister chose that time to test the grip of gravity on an inflated rubber ball with a ring shaped handle called a hippity hop. The metal tipped dart tends to lose velocity after a ricochet, it turns out, and this is good and bad. Bad because if it was going faster it would have gone by before my sisters forehead entered that same point in time and space. Good because it did hit her in the forehead at the height of her bounce, and stuck, momentarily, before dropping and hanging there for what seemed like an eternity. It then fell out of her skin and hit the floor. She didn’t seem to realize what happened for a few seconds, and I’m still convinced that her 5 year old mind said to her, “hey, I bet if you cry right now, you can get your big brother in trouble” and so started the water works. I convinced her she was making a big deal over nothing. Hey I was 10 years old and my first thought was not that she could have lost an eye, but that I could get my butt beat, and looking back I would have deserved it. Later as a teenager my friends and I threw darts in a different basement trying to answer the same question of velocity plus sharpness equals how much damage? This time nobody but a large copper kettle got hurt, though we were bigger and stronger, but obviously no more intelligent, and by the way my sister didn’t remember the incident when I confessed it to my mother 30 years later. What does that have to do with the Darts app in this review? Beats the hell out of me, but it had darts in it.
The game is very good, and safer than real life darts. There’s a practice mode to show the controls which are easy to learn, just swipe the screen. One option is to aim by placing the cross hairs, then swipe to throw which is easier than just swiping to throw and aim. Four dart color choices are nice, and if you have the iphone, there’s a vibration on bulls-eyes option as well. The graphics are great for a game like this since it’s not like a 3-D shooter or racing game where you expect graphic excellence. If you know darts at all, well your up on me, but you have options like straight in double out etc… which means throwing doubles or singles to begin or end the game, and that adds dimension to your strategy. In the X01 style of darts you start with points and try to reach zero, so you can choose to start with 301, 501, 601, 701, or 1001 points. American Cricket is the other style and you must hit certain numbers in order. You get plenty of information on rules of play and how to use the interface so you’ll have no trouble getting started even if you’ve never picked up a sharp stick, let alone played Pro Darts on ESPN 12.
I give Darts 5 hippity hops 
out of 5.
PRICE: Free
“Oh, how much could it have hurt, really?”
