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Macbook:Games that DO work.

M

marmaladeboy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 5, 2008
6
0
Hi, I'm a switcher here and a newbie.
I searched through lots of sites (Include this site. ) and found no topic that put up together the list of games that do work on Macbook. So i think I'll create one.

*This is for the people who still wonders whether they'll choose MB over MBP like me. Or people who wants to buy game but aren't sure if it'll fit their MB.
**For the people who say "MB is not for gamers!, Do you really expect other people to waste up another 1k to get a MBP? Money isn't grow on trees. And if you buy a game and find out that this piece of 50$ disc isn't work. Think how you'll feel.

Ok, here's the list of WORKING games.
the list contains only new games (That probably says it doesn't support GMA950) [from several sites. Do not trust it 100%]

+ The Sims 2 [Choppy] & it's expansion packs.
+ The Sims life stories series. For notebooks!
+ C&C Tiberium Wars [very choppy] [some says works well.]
+ The Movies (& Stunts) [Quality not proved]
+ Tomb Raider Anniversary [Proved works]
+ WoW [A bit choppy]
+ HL2 [Pretty Choppy] - UD: Youtuber post a vid that show decent quality.
+ COD2
+ CIV 3 [just works]
+ CIV 4 [Uncertain, depends]
+ Harry Potter 5 [The apple store rev. says that it works.] [Pretty Choppy]
+ BattleField 2142 [Low settings] - 6/4/08
+ Halo
+ Myst : series [Read once that EP5 doesn't ruin on LP?]
This is all I recall.

The game that don't work at all.(Don't waste your time & money.)

- Tigerwood 08
- Collin Macrae Rally

Please leave your experience on gaming with Macbook. I'll update this often.
 
These few games have worked for me in BOOTCAMP, XP:

GTA vice city - runs easily
Dungeon Siege II - a little laggy but 15+ fps
Morrowind - blazes through it
Star Wars KOTOR - Very playable on medium settings, 20-25+ fps
Baldur's Gate II - Turn everything up, it's ancient.

Games that DON'T work:

Star Wars Jedi Academy in OSX 10.5.2
I just get a buzzing sound when I try to open the program and it closes.

Neverwinter Nights in Bootcamp
Crashes before the menu.

Please help.
 
Actually C&C3 works well. I ran it at native resolution with most settings on medium and it was playable. Take everything down to lowest and I easily got 30+ FPS.
 
Unreal Tournament 2004 works on my MacBook with GMA950, but its choppy.
KOTOR works in OSX, but its quite buggy so save often
KOTOR 2 runs in CrossOver Games, but cursor is invisible until you press the mouse button
Warcraft 3 RoC works in OS X @ full graphics smoothly
Starcraft (obviously) works but Mac version is horrible on Intel Macs - the game crashes in battle.net very often (but not during the match itself, thank god ;) )

All I can think of atm
 
j3yq said:
so in order to get halo working you have to run bootcamp?
Click to expand...

Nope, there is a Mac version. I bought it on eBay the other week and it is playable on medium settings (see my sig for MB specs). I haven't got too far into it though so it may slowdown if there's too much going on. It's Ok for online multiplayer too. It wasn't cheap however...

COD2 is also playable in single player mode on medium settings, some slowdown when there are lots of smoke effects. I found online multiplayer an unplayable slideshow unfortunately.
 
Unreal Tournament 2004, which is still tons of fun for me, runs great at high quality settings on my 2.2GHz MacBook (X3100) at full 1280x800 resolution. Was playing a bit earlier tonight. Virtually no choppiness even with 12 bots running around.
 
Diablo II - flawless performance in OS X, with the latest 1.11b update and the LOD expansion for increased resolution (a must)
Sam & Max series - via bootcamp, runs perfectly, around 25-30fps with all settings on mamimum
World of Warcraft - works well with medium settings, around 14fps outdoors and 30-35 during instances
 
marmaladeboy said:
Hi, I'm a switcher here and a newbie.
I searched through lots of sites (Include this site. ) and found no topic that put up together the list of games that do work on Macbook. So i think I'll create one.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the list.

The problem with the term "games that do work on Macbook" is that it can be little deceiving because this determination is so subjective. I come from a techie / gamer background and would not say that a game really worked on a system if it only installed and ran at the minimum requirements or with poor resolution and performance quality.

I've tried to run a couple older low requirement games (WarCraft II, etc). on my MacBook and between the high CPU temps, poor game performance and the fan running at break neck speeds, I wouldn't call it an enjoyable experience, but they did "work".

Perhaps my expectations for games are just really high, but if a game doesn't run well at the native resolution of my LCD monitor on a particular system then I tend not to enjoy the experience and subsequently tend not to play games on that system.

With that said, I never expected to run games on my MacBook C2D 2.0 GHz, but probably like you I was curious what it could run and how it would perform. :)

I hear exactly what you are saying about the price points of Mac's that will run games with better performance. What I would like to see from Apple is a moderately priced headless Mac with the ability to add a DIY 3D video card (one already supported by Apple). They could probably price such a system around what the MacBooks go for today. I realize this is a long shot, but I can hope... :D
 
BlackMax said:
T
I've tried to run a couple older low requirement games (WarCraft II, etc). on my MacBook and between the high CPU temps, poor game performance and the fan running at break neck speeds, I wouldn't call it an enjoyable experience, but they did "work".
Click to expand...

Do you mean WarCraft III? Or is there a way to run WarCraft II on an Intel Mac?

And if you do mean WarCraft III, the performance is actually quite good on my MacBook. I get about 50 fps (25 in huge battles) with all settings maxed and 1280x800 resolution.
 
Tom B. said:
Do you mean WarCraft III? Or is there a way to run WarCraft II on an Intel Mac?

And if you do mean WarCraft III, the performance is actually quite good on my MacBook. I get about 50 fps (25 in huge battles) with all settings maxed and 1280x800 resolution.
Click to expand...

Opps, sorry. I did mean WarCraft III. Perhaps the difference is I'm playing it on my desktop 19" LCD which is 1280 x 1024 native resolution. I find the MacBook LCD just too small to play these types of games. Too much scrolling.
 
BlackMax said:
Opps, sorry. I did mean WarCraft III. Perhaps the difference is I'm playing it on my desktop 19" LCD which is 1280 x 1024 native resolution. I find the MacBook LCD just too small to play these types of games. Too much scrolling.
Click to expand...

Ok, that would explain it, but WarCraft III does not show you any more of the map on higher resolutions. You see the same amount on 640x480 as you would on 2560x1600.
 
BlackMax:

Hi , I know quite well about how you feel with gaming. I'm someone like that too.
The reason I started this thread is that to create a list of 'working' games from user's experience, and that will help 'me' and lots of people to decide weather they will buy the game or not.
For example, I REALLY want to play The Sims 2 on my macbook. It is uncertain that it will run well or not.
Some says it sucks. After I had watched a youtube video of the game running on a macbook. I decided that 'Hey! I wasn't that bad at all.'
That's why I use [quality] after my every games on the list.
*note that it's from people around the net and I don't say to trust it 100%
 
marmaladeboy said:
BlackMax:

Hi , I know quite well about how you feel with gaming. I'm someone like that too.
The reason I started this thread is that to create a list of 'working' games from user's experience, and that will help 'me' and lots of people to decide weather they will buy the game or not.
For example, I REALLY want to play The Sims 2 on my macbook. It is uncertain that it will run well or not.
Some says it sucks. After I had watched a youtube video of the game running on a macbook. I decided that 'Hey! I wasn't that bad at all.'
That's why I use [quality] after my every games on the list.
*note that it's from people around the net and I don't say to trust it 100%
Click to expand...

I understand. Even though I did not expect to be able to play games on my MacBook, I went through the same "testing" period with my MacBook and different games and eventually decided the two didn't go together very well. Perhaps it was a self fulfilling prophecy, but that was the conclusion I reached.

I should point out that my MacBook is older and uses the Intel GMA950 graphics processor. I've read that the Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor in the newer MacBooks provide a considerable improvement running 3D based games and that it provides unified shader processors and hardware vertex shaders where the Intel GMA950 graphics processor has none.

It would be interesting to compare the experience of someone using a newer MacBook with the Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with these same games.
 
I have macbook with gma 950 and 2 gb ram.
I have run Half-life 2 in XP perfectly with no choppy graphics. In crossover games its a little choppy, so I run it in dx 7 mode.
HL2: DM works in dx 7 mode.
CS:Source works good in low dx 8 settings.
Half-Life 1 based games works perfectly in Crossover Games and XP.
 
BlackMax said:
I've read that the Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor in the newer MacBooks provide a considerable improvement running 3D based games and that it provides unified shader processors and hardware vertex shaders where the Intel GMA950 graphics processor has none.

It would be interesting to compare the experience of someone using a newer MacBook with the Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with these same games.
Click to expand...

Sadly, the Leopard driver for the X3100 is crap. The performance is not nearly as improved as it should be and textures sometimes show artifacts or become corrupted over time. Apple is aware of the issue and is working on a new driver, but for now you're better off with the GMA950.
 
(on an x3100 MacBook)

Age of Empires II and Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds work if you hold command down while launching and make sure 'don't switch resolution for movies' and '256 colours on OSX' are checked.

As for Jedi Academy and some other Aspyr-based Quake 3 engine games, the buzzing problem's due to launching fullscreen with the x3100. If you get it to launch in windowed mode, it runs fine. You can achieve this by putting this autoexec.cfg into your game/base folder, so it would end up for example at /Applications/Jedi Academy/base/autoexec.cfg.
 
I installed Galactic Civilizations 2 in Fusion 1.1.1 on my MB with GMA950. I enabled the 3D in Fusion and GalCiv2 appears to work fine. I haven't spent any time playing it, but an initial "start game" and moving the ship around worked just fine, so I'm guessing/hoping the rest will work fine as well.

Mike
 
Prey is a good

Prey ran great on m MB (not MBP), but I turned it down.

I tried Quake 4. Nope. I tried Enemy Territory. Nope.
 
Missing 256 color support on OS X 10.5.3 and later :(

jimthorn said:
Sadly, the Leopard driver for the X3100 is crap. The performance is not nearly as improved as it should be and textures sometimes show artifacts or become corrupted over time. Apple is aware of the issue and is working on a new driver, but for now you're better off with the GMA950.
Click to expand...

I've got a MacBook with the X3100 and it really isen't that great. As of OS X Leopard 10.5.3 there isen't support for 256 colors wich means that older games like Diablo 2 LOD won't run. Thank God I was able to downgrade the OS to 10.5.2 that came with the mac. I'm not upgrading until Apple trows the 256 colorsuport back in. Where might I complain about this to apple? :)


Jedidiah
 
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