This is the first in a series of experiments where I take PC games and try to run them on my MacBook. The goal is to see how many games will run out of the box (and to what degree) without any patches or updates. This is why blogs are useful (or lame).

Update: I wrote this piece about a week ago but just found out that the re-release of this game onto next gen consoles (and Mac?) will happen in the Sping. So, admittedly, this post is not as timely as it may appear, given that Kotaku just mentioned the game here last night. Ah, well. Without further ado…

So, I was watching Pitch Black on TV on Sunday, and all of a sudden, I had the urge to play The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. You know, the only really good thing to come out of the Riddick uni(or under)verse? Anyway, I started watching the movie and remembered what a cool game it was. All of the sneaking around, ultra violence, and the infamous eyeshine were coming back to me as I sat there watching Vin Diesel throw down on TV.

There were a few snags, however. 1.) no more PC (and it was a PC-only game), and 2.) the XBOX version isn’t compatible with the XBOX 360. So, I decided to load up XP on my MacBook and install the game to see what would happen, and thus, the birth of the “WIll it Mac?” series.

My MacBook’s stats are:

2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo
2 gigs of slowish 667mhz ram
Intel GMA 3100x video card (144 mb shared)
160 gig HD
13.3″ screen
Leopard 10.5.5 / Windows XP SP2
and a Microsoft mouse (shhhh)

Before installing the game, I Googled the game to see if anyone had tried playing it on a Mac, just to see if there were any issues (and partially to see if I were the first to do it). Turns out, I couldn’t find anything, so I was flying blind!

XP was a breeze to install — Boot Camp walks you through everything beforehand (including the pros and cons for using XP and Vista, to some degree). What was missing, though, was the ability to view the instructions and reading guide on the computer. Apple only gave me one option (print) but I didn’t want to waste the trees, so I just found it online. Come on, guys, let’s save some paper here.

Anyway, once XP was installed I installed the Windows drivers from the Leopard disc (really easy) and I was off to the races. I grabbed the disc and proceeded to install the game.

Again, no issues here. Well, one. I was halfway through the first install when my Mac told me my disc was bad (scratch free), so I started over and it worked fine. Only a minor hiccup, though.

The opening menus loaded perfectly. The Giant Cube that houses all of the game’s options turned itself around just fine (I was running the game at 640×480 at this point), so I thought I’d up the resolution just to see what was going on. Let me run this down for you now:

800×600: screen flips upside down, plays fine
1024×768: back to normal, still plays fine
1280×800: screen turns 90 degrees to the right, still plays fine.

Have you ever used a mouse when the screen tilts 90 degrees? It sucks. Don’t try it. I settled on 1024×768 and proceeded to play the game.

Crash.

WTF?

Load the game again. Start from the beginning — get through the intro video. Crash.

Load it again. Play the game for about 20 seconds. Crash.

Load it again, the game runs fine.

Given that the game crashed in three different spots, it seemed worth it to keep playing around with the settings just to see what would happen. I turned down the graphical detail by 1/3, though, just in case the horrifically bad video card had trouble keeping up (this game was a powerhouse…in 2004). I had visions of a smoldering MacBook, so it was better to be safe than sorry here.

I think the game ran pretty well, overall. The video card is clearly at the lowest end of the hardware on the Mac, but it still managed to churn out the screenshots below:

Not bad, not bad at all. There were some weird graphical issues, though, when it came to lighting. The dynamic lighting operated more like lazers, in that I could walk through the path the light traveled to shine on the floor, on the walls, etc. I could actually see strings of light from the source to across the room:

It’s obviously not ideal to show this in JPG format, but there you go. The light source shot light across Riddick’s back and landed back near the source. Fairly bizarre but no big deal. There wasn’t any effect on gameplay whatsoever.

I had almost finished the introductory level, when something very strange happened. The last section of the first level involves some sneaking around in the dark. While this was no big deal, I had apparently forgotten that the guards down here were either midgets or children.

The playback for the all of the voice acting was sped up, and it sounded like each NPC was sucking helium. I have never, ever heard this before. It was absolutely hilarious. The pitch would fluctuate between octaves, like each guard was holding a balloon instead of a gun, For comedic factor alone, this was the best part of the game to me. The small talk between guards sounded like a middle school birthday party. I almost didn’t have the heart to take them out.

All in all, the game played pretty well, albeit with some scaled-back graphics, wonky audio, and minor graphical glitches. This will probably serve as a good jumping-off point for future tests, because I suspect a lot of these issues will continue, particularly with older PC games (well, the point should be made that every game I will try will be older PC games because the Mac clearly, clearly can’t handle anything after 2005. Makes me almost miss the old desktop).