Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Gaming options for the mac, a question.

Y

yakkowarner epi

macrumors member
Original poster
May 1, 2011
73
0
For gaming on the mac it seems like there are 4 options.

Get boot camp and spend 200 for windows 7. I have heard that an upgrade disk with window XP won't work even with the previous disks. This will cost around 200 bucks. There is nothing else I would use windows 7 for.

Buy the more expensive Mac games. And deal with the limited selection.

Buy steam games but I know absolutely nothing about this.

Or give up and just use my PS 3 as my gaming choice (this is what I'm leaning towards with the exception of a few mac games).

What's your opinion?


I also would like to find a way to finish playing my pc version of elder scrolls and Black and White 1. Is there an emulator out there that can work?

thx,
 
You don't have to put Win7 on it. XP will work with all current PC games I think? XP is a lot cheaper and easier to find in bargain deals. Up until May I was still using XP SP3 and there really isn't any PC game I cannot play with it.
 
While the selection of Mac games is comparatively limited compared to Windows, since the Mac AppStore is up, there's a nice resurgence of good gaming apps at a reasonable price. However, it depends on what kind of games you're looking for.
The Mac AppStore is only months old, so one could imagine it's gonna be big in the coming years.
 
The App Store only offers little flash-like games you would play for free on the internet. Games like,... let's see the App Store for a minute... ah: Hard Rock Racing, World of Goo, RoboRoll, Video Tennis, Farm It!, Angry Birds,... I don't call games! Windows-users laugh at Mac-users when you call these things games, childish cheap-looking things which can be played on an iPhone!

There's only a small selection of real games like Bioshock, Modern Combat: Domination, Civilization V, Call of Duty 4, Lego Indiana Jones,...

When new games are released, it often only comes for PC, and when it does comes to Mac, it's ported to Mac which means performance is lower and you need to wwait longer for the same game.

If a game I want is available for Mac, I buy it for Mac. But having Windows Bootcamp is perfect for games like Crysis (2), Battlefield 2, Dirt 3, Hunted, Fable III, Brink,...

Like told; you can get an OEM Windows 7, which is a lot cheaper. Even an upgrade version works (a few minutes in RegEdit will do the trick ;))!
 
There's two options.

1) If you want to play specific games/the latest games, then you will need to set up Boot Camp. A copy of Windows 7 can be had for around USD$100, so that's not a major concern. There is no reason to use XP (it's not really cheaper) and Windows 7 will be better for modern games.

2) If you want to play games, but aren't picky, then get Steam and play the games that are Mac-compatible. There's actually an (ever-increasing) library of current-gen games there that run on OS X (Portal 2, Civ 5) and plenty of last year's games like Assassin's Creed 2, Torchlight and Counterstrike, amongst others.
 
elithrar said:
snip... and plenty of last year's games like Assassin's Creed 2, Torchlight and Counterstrike, amongst others.
Click to expand...

I had no idea Torchlight was available for OS X. I have it on my Windows laptop but now I will buy a Steam copy for my 24" iMac.

Thanks!

Cheers,
 
elithrar said:
There's two options.

1) If you want to play specific games/the latest games, then you will need to set up Boot Camp. A copy of Windows 7 can be had for around USD$100, so that's not a major concern. There is no reason to use XP (it's not really cheaper) and Windows 7 will be better for modern games.

2) If you want to play games, but aren't picky, then get Steam and play the games that are Mac-compatible. There's actually an (ever-increasing) library of current-gen games there that run on OS X (Portal 2, Civ 5) and plenty of last year's games like Assassin's Creed 2, Torchlight and Counterstrike, amongst others.
Click to expand...

This is spot on.

To add to this, a third option is to use emulation software (VMWare Fusion or Parallels) for older titles. For 3D games, DirectX 9 is the latest reasonable support you can expect. For non-3D games, they should all run like a champ. You can run Windows in a VM and not have to dual boot. Additionally, you can also run your Boot Camp partition within the virtual machine if you so desire, but that won't allow you to run something like Crysis 2 or Metro 2033 -- for that, you need to boot into Windows on the bare metal with Boot Camp.
 
mrfoof82 said:
This is spot on.

To add to this, a third option is to use emulation software (VMWare Fusion or Parallels) for older titles. For 3D games, DirectX 9 is the latest reasonable support you can expect. For non-3D games, they should all run like a champ. You can run Windows in a VM and not have to dual boot. Additionally, you can also run your Boot Camp partition within the virtual machine if you so desire, but that won't allow you to run something like Crysis 2 or Metro 2033 -- for that, you need to boot into Windows on the bare metal with Boot Camp.
Click to expand...

I avoided stating that option for confusion's sake, but you're right. I use VMWare (on my Boot Camp partition) for older games like Baldur's Gate 2, ToEE, etc. (stuff I buy from GOG.com) since they don't need 'native performance' to run, and it's more convenient than rebooting.
 
Double purchases unnecessary?

panzer06 said:
I had no idea Torchlight was available for OS X. I have it on my Windows laptop but now I will buy a Steam copy for my 24" iMac.
Click to expand...
I'm out on a limb here as my N=1 as of yet, but my physical copy of Civ 5 was for Windows. I registered this license with Steam so that now, as my new Mac arrived, I could use same license for the OS X version. Maybe you could get by doing the registration thing too?

Great value, if you ask me. There are some trade-offs to this, but worth it IMO.
 
Norne said:
I'm out on a limb here as my N=1 as of yet, but my physical copy of Civ 5 was for Windows. I registered this license with Steam so that now, as my new Mac arrived, I could use same license for the OS X version. Maybe you could get by doing the registration thing too?
Click to expand...

You're right; any game labelled as "Steamplay" with both a Windows & Mac icon can be downloaded for both OS's, even if you only bought it when it was Windows-only.

It should show up as "Not Installed" in your library, as opposed to "Not Available".
 
But lets be honest about this... until Apple update their OpenGL drivers to latest versions and optimise the crap out of them, games will still run better in a bootcamped Windows partition.

Depends on how much you're bothered about FPS I guess.
 
Even NFS carbon (OSX version) demoed on my local reseller looks crap on iMac 2010 (27" i3 with radeon 5670m 512mb)

Yeah that gpu aint good enough for games, but seriously, it's only NFS carbon!! A 6 y.o racing game!

Gaming on osx need major maintenance
 
Last edited:
panzer06 said:
I had no idea Torchlight was available for OS X. I have it on my Windows laptop but now I will buy a Steam copy for my 24" iMac.

Thanks!

Cheers,
Click to expand...

I've never played Diablo before, and Diablo 3 looks great, but if the gameplay is anything like Torchlight, I'll pass. I find it's boring and completely devoid of fun. But that's me.

Right, back on topic !
 
iSayuSay said:
Even NFS carbon (OSX version) demoed on my local reseller looks crap on iMac 2010 (27" i3 with radeon 5670m 512mb)

Yeah that gpu aint good enough for games, but seriously, it's only NFS carbon!! A 6 y.o racing game!

Gaming on osx need major maintenance
Click to expand...


Well I don't know what demo you looked at.. I play StarCraft 2 on my iMac and it looks awesome.. 10x the game that any NFS is and runs perfectly fine!! I also run Windows 7 bootcamp and play tons of other games using that same GPU and no problems there either!!
 
Actually DON'T run older games on the iMac especially on the 27" and expect it to look good. I tried BF2 last night.. It never looked that bad in my memory but hell it was crap. The bigger rest actualy made some 2D graphics / Texture looks like crap. If you wanna see a nice looking game trying something more recent. NFS Carbon is so old 2006?!) it will never look good now. Operation Flashpoint Red River looks pretty good on my 27". Then I load Arma2 even at graphics details set to ultra.. it doesn't look that good (It is still pretty damn good though). I wanna see how BF3 will be like.. I hope there will be a demo.
 
lavino said:
Then I load Arma2 even at graphics details set to ultra.. it doesn't look that good (It is still pretty damn good though).
Click to expand...

Arma2 is pretty hit-and-miss anyway. I have a friend with an i7/3GB GTX590 and at ultra (everything maxed) it still suffers from bland textures and particle effects.
 
I just got my 3.4 iMac today. SC2 Looks incredible compared to the mac mini. Just WOW.

I also downloaded dragon age 1 to play.

I never completed Black & White 1 on the pc and it's a game I really wanted to finish. Is there any way I can play it on my mac without boot camp and windows? Or command and conquer red alert? (my PC died when I was in the middle of it right before I got the mac mini.)

And what website do you recommend I buy and download games made for the mac? Other than the mac store of course.
 
Have you tried Crossover? I never actually tried it on an actual Mac. I had it running on a hackintosh machine with Hazard 10.6.6i It didn't work out for me as some games will be missing 2D graphics and etc. I think it might have something to do with that older 9800GT I had in that PC box. You might want to give that a try and see if it works for you. Some games works and some don't. I have tested DeadSpace 1. Besides the missing menu graphics and some stuff in the intro section the game runs fine. GRAW2 didn't work on it as it freezes during an actual mission load. But that's about all the games I have tried.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back