OS X Black Ops Mac Edition - Worth It?

I enjoy the CoD series greatly - fast paced and gotta be on your toes. I play CoD 4 on the Mac and it's great - smooth as silk and can play with PC players. No hackers in the good servers, and the general community is awesome (polar opposite from the console community).

Now I really want to get Black Ops as I have it for the PC, and I really enjoyed it. Thing is I can't believe that Aspyr didn't make it cross platform or Steam-play compatible. WTF? CoD 4 is, as with every other game they've ported.

- However, I'm willing to look past that (maybe) if Black Ops is worth it on the Mac.

How well does it run?

Are there many people still playing on the Mac version?

Any hackers?

Are there any servers that aren't Aspyr? You know, with mods and admins to keep it clean and free of hackers?

Also, if people mod, does that pose any kind of security issue for me?

Any and all info would be greatly appreciated. I'd buy this in a heartbeat if it were cross platform. Seriously Aspyr...

Thanks for the reply - yeah I e-mailed Aspyr about this. I may or may not have sounded a bit frustrated about this whole thing, but I don't think I went overboard or anything like that. I basically just said they may have lost a sale IF it's not going to ever go cross-platform, and I was just being honest. And then I asked if it ever will go cross-platform.

I also asked why it wasn't cross-platform from the get-go, as the later ports of MW2 and MW3 are cross-platform.


Anyways, yeah you may be right that the frustration was misplaced. Anyways I'm still all for supporting Aspyr, as they're a great company that have made some very solid ports, like CoD 4 - which again runs smooth as silk at native res with tons of stuff going on onscreen.

I hope to hear more from fellow Mac Edition Black Ops players in this thread.

MichalM.Mac said:

Activision was afraid that Mac version would be more easily hackable thus no cross-platform.

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I highly doubt that's even remotely true - considering I just spoke with Aspyr about all this, whom have been INCREDIBLE in their e-mail responses - both time wise and detail wise. They said that it was a contract issue between Activision/Infinity Ward and Treyarch (like your first sentence mentions) - but nothing about "hacking" or anything. I could be wrong, but I doubt that was it.


Anyways, like I said the staff at Aspyr are phenomenal - really, really open and honest about everything and super cool. They definitely stand behind their product, that I can tell so far (they even updated Black Ops just a week ago - check the Mac App Store version)

That alone almost makes the purchase worth it.

Would still like to hear back from anyone who has Black Ops on Mac.


Found MacGameCast on YouTube who've done many videos about this, and they seem to really enjoy it.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL03cYEfADVmPijGlZJrW1LOHhs0trCBSS

Pretty epic channel devoted to OS X gaming.

So I bought the Mac Edition of Black Ops new for an amazing deal (I'll share where in a bit) - and it runs BEAUTIFULLY! I mean, I knew it would run at least somewhat decently. But I'm in awe. I have *EVERYTHING* maxed out with AA turned off - because AA is just fake fuzzy resolution that's pointless on anything past 720P IMO - and it runs at an almost CONSTANT 91 (max the game can run) FPS. It's awesome. Everything is there that I care about - console with the tilde key, everything - though there's no private matches or theater recording (and some other thing that I don't care about is missing from the Mac version).

This is all on a stock Radeon HD 5770. I plan on upgrading my GPU ASAP too, so that will be icing on the cake.


There were 110 people online when I joined, and you can generally find at least one server with tons of people playing. Community seems typical PC community - most people are pretty nice and cool, with the occasional jerk - but on the whole pretty cool.

Anyways - I *HIGHLY* recommend this game if you're a CoD player like I am, and have a Mac. Just a fantastically done port by Aspyr.

Now - I already had the PC version, and unfortunately it is not cross platform (only Mac game I know of that's like this) and the PC version doesn't get you the Mac version on Steam - so I wasn't going to pay $40 again, but what I found is that you can buy the retail DVD version and use the Steam key inside to 'buy' the game on Steam - and never even have to use the DVD's for installation at all. Truly awesome.

Amazon has this game for 6.98 SHIPPED - and I jumped on it, and I could not be happier that I did.

Hope to see more people on this game! Wonderful job by Aspyr.

MichalM.Mac said:

Why create new thread for this when it should go to original one? -> https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/black-ops-mac-edition-worth-it.1886496/

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Because I felt like it deserved it's own thread. Not everyone may check out the old one, but a new thread usually gets some fresh views etc. Hope that cleared that up for you.

To be fair I'll link this thread to the original.

Bought it. Love it. Review/impressions/performance observations here -

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/black-ops-mac-edition-a-work-of-art.1891427/

MuGeN PoWeR said:

Just a quick question do i have to buy the game from app store? or what? Thanks

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Get the Steam version either way - it's the best one. What I did - like I mentioned in my review - is order it from Amazon for 7 bucks with free shipping and use the key in the box to activate it on Steam - no need to use the install DVDs at all. In fact I suggest you don't as I think it messes up something with the Steam updates etc. for the game.

I just got done playing some more just now - runs so well. Really great port.