Metal Gear Rising For Mac First Impressions....
Well, Transgaming has finally released their Metal Gear Rising Mac 'port' today using their cider wrapping technology. Here are my thoughts so far.
1)Performance & Graphics: Doesn't seem too bad but I actually think the previous version I played was a tad faster. The graphics still look as good as ever though. I mean the performance isn't bad per say but perhaps it'll get better in future versions of OS X such as Yosemite.
Speaking of graphics previously I used to use FXAA Tool to inject FXAA into the game but now the wrapper has bugs with it causing what seems like z-ordering problems... so models such as the player model don't appear unless they are behind something... or something like that.
I ended up removing FXAA Tool and switching to 2xMSAA instead. I might try SweetFX later to see if that fares better. That injector works great for me in mainline Wine.
2)Controls: Kind of took a step back from where it was previously. I used to get the proper X360 gamepad prompts to match the controller I use on screen. Now I just get the generic PC Gamepad numbered button prompts on screen... and they never got around to implementing rumble with the wireless x360 pad I use (with tattiebogle drivers).
3)Sound: Cider has full surround sound finally. I played Metal Gear Rising in 5.1 surround sound today. It works almost perfectly. Except for during the cinematics.
The dialog there gets split amongst the front left and right speakers when it should be coming from the center. I sort of have a theory about that though. It could be that the game isn't specifying where those sounds should go so it's just defaulting to playing them back stereo so thusly they come from the front left and right.
Some games have got this right like Alan Wake and for the most part the Batman Arkham games. I'm not sure whether to blame the game APIs or the sound designer\engineer of the game or the porting process however.
At any rate it's great that Transgaming is catching up to native porting efforts and mainline wine when it comes to sound.