iGame Radio

Virtual Programming announced last week that The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is coming to the Mac. Think Vin Diesel. Think anti-hero. Think a website that buffers way too often. There’s a lot to be excited about regarding this game…it’s really two games in one (featuring Pitch Black as well as Assault on Dark Athena).

But I’m also interested in the system requirements. The recommended CPU speed for the game when it came out is a 1.8 GHz machine. Will they be able to keep the CPU speed there, or will it get raised up a bit? At least most Macs released the past year or two match or beat those requirements.

Also, Dark Athena requires at least a GeForce 6800 or better, but recommends an 8800GT. Past experience with game ports like this tells me that the video card will be more of a factor than the CPU speed, and “recommended” sometimes becomes more of a “required” for decent play. With all of the Macbook Pros having an 8600GT card in them for the past couple of years until just earlier this year (the Macbook until late last year), it means that most Macbooks and Macbook Pros will be at minimum system reqs for the game. The iMac at least had the minimum ATI card and speed back in 2007…but its update recently hasn’t updated the card. So what that all means is that most people who own Macs will be at minimum system requirements for the video card…assuming that the port doesn’t increase those requirements. Joy.