Star Wars- Knights of the Old Republic (Mac) Description:

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Mac) review:
4 stars (A long LONG time ago?) - This is definitely a fun game, but don't play it unless you have a lot of time on your hands because you can easily get engrossed and play for a good 10 hours (I'm guilty of that).



I do have a slight problem with the game though, (it come's from being a nerd who gets into the details of everything I watch/play) and that is how it ties into the Star Wars universe. I feel like this game isn't quite in the same universe, it kinda straddles Star Wars and some unnamed other universe. For instance, yes, it has Jedi, yes there are lightsabers, yes, there's a ship that's alot like the Millenium Falcon. But, lots of the technology seems like it has no place in Star Wars. The environments go from looking dead on (Taris) to looking like something out of Star Trek (Manaan), and that's not an insult because I love Star Trek too.



The story is incredibly interesting and there are alot, verging on too many, options of customizing your character, though I suppose that's typical for this genre.



The graphics are amazing and run very well, even on a system that just barely meets the requirements. But I don't like tweeking the graphics for each environment, and it seems like there are times when my computer just doesn't want to render quickly so it starts being jumpy, but that's rare.



I think if I could buy this over again, I'd buy it on the Xbox, since that's what I did for it's sequel, and will continue to do for every game that I really want that's on both systems.
3 stars (10.4.2 warning!) - This game will not work with 10.4.2, unless you use the Aspyr-provided workaround. Here's what they had to say:



There are currently some issues with the video card drivers in OS 10.4. A future operating system update should correct this, but there is a workaround that you can use in the meantime.



In the Finder, go to your home folder, open the Library/Preferences/Knights of the Old Republic folder.  

Double click the 'swkotor.ini' file to edit it in TextEdit

Scroll down to the section [Graphics Options], and add the line "Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1" (without quotes)

Save the swkotor.ini file and close it.
2 stars (Overated I prefer Star War Galaxies) - I was dissapointed with this game. This game follows the same traditional format. The game takes you by the hand and basically leads you sequentially through a series of events. You get a series of dialog boxes to choose what to say, I hate this it is so old couldn't they do away with all the boring dialog boxes. I do not like the controls or the way combat is done in this game.



Star War Galaxies is 200 times better in my opinion. Despite all the terrible reviews and complaints about players no other game comes close to the total star wars experience than Star War Galaxies. As much as people complain about the Jedi system and how terrible the Jedi look in SWG, it is way better than the Jedi system in this game.



Nothing origonal in this game same old cookie cutter format, same old taking player by the hand and guiding them through every step without much freedom of thought on his own. This game is like an old game made 10 years ago with an updated graphic engine. Even the graphics in this game are poor compared to games with similar system requirements.



Finally my last complaint. Why did I decide to buy this game for the Mac instead of the PC? I don't know I thought since It was on the Mac it would be more stable and more enjoyable to play. What a joke! Right after I installed the game it crashes on startup. I search the internet and find out this a common problem with OS X Tiger, and I need to patch the game with an update in order for the game to work. The performance of this game is horrible! My mac mini meets all the system requirements and this game runs painfully slow in higher resolutions and higher detail settings. The mac version is over double about 2.5 times the cost of the PC version and it doesn't perform nearly as well as the PC version! What a rip off, how come they can't write better code for the mac version? how come they can't better utilize Altivec?