So I got me a sweet n’ sexified new Macbook Pro and I’m itching (the excited-anxious kind, not the ‘I had sex with a Thai prostitute because I was bored and didn’t know better’ kind) to find me a good game. I’ve been big into RPG’s in the past (BGII was my back in the day fav on PC and Mass Effect gave me the happy tingles for weeks) but, as I’m stuck abroad, far from the warm glow of my Xbox 360, I’m limited to what I can find for my computer. Any thoughts?
Both **World of Warcraft **and Spore have excellent and well-supported Mac implementations. Delving into strategy games, the ports of the Europa Universalis (and other Paradox) games to the Mac by Virtual Programming are great implementations of great games.
“Mac game” is damn close to an oxymoron. If you wanted to game, you should’ve gotten a PC. 
I gotta agree. Sure, there are good games available for Mac - I spent 4 years playing Diablo 2 on one. But one of the major reasons I switched to PC was the lack of games. And I’m no hardcore gamer - I haven’t bought a NEW game since WoW…
Joe
Sim City 2000?
There are plenty of Mac games. It doesn’t has as many, but it certainly has far more good ones than any one person could go through even if they did nothing all their lives but played games. PCs has a wider variety of usually inferior software, just like they have a wider variety of inferior hardware. Crazy Al’s Used Car Lot may have a mile of vehicles to sell you, but if you have a new sports car, who cares.
The OP could have given more info on the full range of kinds of games that might work, but as a quick one I prefer RPG games that are turn-based, so the Avernum series, the Geneforge series and even Moria would be recommendations. The first two have multiple releases and huge free demos. Moria is completely free and very, very old school dungeon-crawling (text-only symbols represent monsters). None will win any awards for graphics, but game play is top notch.
If you want heavily graphic-oriented RPG, WoW is the behemoth right now and scientifically proven to be as addictive as crack cocaine.
If you liked Balders Gate II you might want to check out Neverwinter Nights II and some mods for it.
Also, I agree with the “there are more games for windows” sentiment, hence me installing windows on my mac (gods I hate vista…) all the PC games I have run perfectly.
Helpful, that.
I’ve been playing Spore on my shiny new iMac for the past week, and it’s wicked fun. It’s certainly up my alley - goofy and silly, oriented towards creativity and exploration. I’d say it’s more in the SimCity/Civilization vein than WoW or Baldur’s Gate.
There’s the option of using an app like CrossOver Games to run a Windows game. It’s basically Wine for OS X. I use it to run several things. I’m not sure how it does with some of the more graphically… intense games out there, because I prefer to play those on shiny consoles, but it’s worth a shot, especially if you already have some PC games to play. If not, I’d get the app and then borrow a PC game from a friend to see how it works.
any time you run an OS through an emu program you’re going to have a decent amount of lag as you simply need more power to run the emu. You may not notice this on many programs, but for graphically intensive games you are likely to (though I have heard great things about WINE).
IMO the best option, if you want to play windows games on a mac, is to simply use Bootcamp to install windows on your mac and, when you want to play a game, boot into windows. That’s what I do. Granted it can be annoying to have to reboot your comp every time you wanna play a PC game, but it’s worth the extra two minutes or whatever, imo
I enjoyed Sketch Fighter 4000 for a stretch. Its a great diversion and time waster, and although it has suck-your-soul-out-of-your-eyeballs potential, its not long enough to devour your entire life, if in fact you get addicted to it. The Hard Mode is quite challenging, and you will find that many of the strategies you developed the first time through may not be effective with the increased difficulty.
The only weakness of this game is the never-changing-map. This game could benefit greatly from a random level generator found in games like Diablo.
Check out the other titles from Ambrosia Software as well. They are a Mac-only game developer. I have only played Sketch Fighter, but their other games look pretty good too. I plan on wasting more time on their games this summer, when I get free time again.
Some of the Mac ports don’t seem to work all that well. Europa Univeralis III failed me horribly, and was pretty much unplayable.
Can anyone recommend a good strategy game for the Mac that does work well?
And even for ports that make it to the Mac there tends to be a horrible lag in terms of extran content and patches. NWN 2 for example is only up to ver 1.12 on Mac where on Pc there are two expansions and its up to ver 1.22.
I’ll second Popejewish’s suggestion to simply boot up vista or XP on your mac and play games on that OS.
Don’t worry, vista won’t sully your precious overpriced apple hardware (at least I don’t think so 
)
EV Nova from Ambrosia. Download it online. Great game!
Only a Mac user would use “WoW” and “heavy graphics” in the same sentence. 
That said I like the old school flair in the indie RPGs that Dan mentioned.
Did you ever get to either of the Neverwinter Nights games? I see that there appear to be Mac-native versions of both of those out; the first one has better mod-type-campaigns, the second one has a better (though still not great) packaged campaign, each of them are a bit flawed but worth playing if you’re into that style RPG.
Thanks for the great suggestions! I will definitely check out what Ambrosia has to offer, along with some of the other recommendations here.
Yes, I am very aware that my computer is less-than-tailored for the gaming world, but I do lots of photo and video editing and other stuff as well. Add a healthy dose of Microsoft loathing (die, die, die you evil bug-laden data losing ass-muppet of an OS!!) and you have a brand new Mac user. Plus Macs are pretty. Pretty wins points with me.
And yes, I’m aware that I DO have the ability to run windows on my system, just as I have the ability to stab myself repeatedly in the kneecaps with a pencil, though I’m not sure which would be more painful. Plus I’d have to shell out around ten thousand of my hard-earned rupees for XP (wouldn’t consider Vista if it came with a Kama-sutra sex princess with beer flavored nipples) and I just can’t bring myself to do it. Another few months of gaming withdrawal, maybe this is a different conversation…
To further complicate matters, I’ve relocated to India where Mac software is about as easy to find as a decent cheeseburger. If I find a game that REALLY sparks my interest, I can probably have it delivered but I’m just not really into the whole ‘patience’ gig. I’m an instant gratification kinda guy. As such, I’d love to hear more about games that can be downloaded or played online (purchased or, even better, for free :)). I also didn’t mean to imply that I’m only limited to RPG’s, only that in my very limited computer gaming experience, I’ve enjoyed the BG style RPG’s (yes, NWN was awesome as well) in the past. Also FWIW, Fantastic Contraption had captured my soul for many months until I got bored with the limited amount of stages. Honestly though, I can get into pretty much anything from sports to first person shooters. I also love strategy games. I just have to be able to run them on OSX.
EU3 should work fine on the Mac, as far as I’m aware (I do support for the PC-based version on the Paradox forums, and get a few Mac users straying by). If nothing else the Complete version (EU3 plus both expansions) with the current 3.1 patch ought to be more than playable. Have you reported any problems to Virtual Programming? Were they gameplay problems or more Tech Support kind of things?
I’m an admitted old school gamer whose favorite game right now is in ASCII text, so that’s heavy graphics as far as I am concern. If you’re suggesting that Macs can’t handle graphics just as well as PCs, then you’re sadly mistaken. Most of the PC games that run poorly on Macs is because some developers made PC code and then didn’t bother to get someone who knew what they were doing to port it right. Macs are the powerhouses of graphic design, and always have been, so obviously heavy graphics are not a problem.
I program graphics on both operating systems for a living.
2D (Graphic Design) graphics and 3D (games) graphics take radically different hardware. And by any objective measure, the graphics cards in Macs lag far behind the cards in their Windows counterparts, mostly because you only get the very small selection that Apple makes available (there are almost no third-party Mac graphics cards), and because most of Apple’s lineup, even the desktop Mini and iMac, take notebook graphics chips rather than the much higher-power desktop ones.
Macs do a lot of things (particularly color handling) better than Windows boxes, and hence hold onto their significant numbers of creative users (no longer a majority, but still a much higher market share than in almost any other field except maybe science and Hollywood). But game graphics are not one of them. On average, a new Mac’s graphics capabilities will be about two generations behind a new Windows box’s, especially on “power” systems. Trust me when I say this is a constant disappointment to game developers – even the ones who “know what they’re doing.” The frame rates of OpenGL are roughly comparable to those of DirectX on equivalent hardware, sure – but the graphics hardware is very much not equivalent.