Mac Gaming

If you took Call of Duty 1 or 2 and mixed it in a pot with Rainbox Six: Vegas, you’d have a pretty good idea of what Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway is like — a linear FPS with tactical, squad-based elements. I picked it up a few weeks back on GamersGate for $7.50 USD and I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of it, though it took longer to download than for me to play through.

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Tags: brothers in arms, rainbow six vegas, call of duty, fallout 3, far cry 2

Pretty much unlike any game I’ve ever played (other than the first-person perspective), theHunter is a slow, meditative, and yet heart-pounding experience. It’s a hunting sim, yes, but so well done that you get lost in it — completely and utterly taken in by the atmosphere and the actual hunting (tracking, spotting, luring) itself. Did I mention it’s free? Well, it is. As long as you don’t mind hunting only Mule Deer, you don’t have to pay a cent — simply go to the website and sign up for the “Guest Pass,” which gets you a rifle, unlimited ammo, and all the Mule Deer you can bag.

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Tags: thehunter

I know, I know — another RPG. What can I say? I like RPGs, and I came to the party kind of late. One of my friends had Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic a couple years ago and, while I didn’t really like that specific game, it got me hooked on role-playing games in general. So, in November 2007, I bought The Witcher and that game sealed my fate: I loved it and that began my quest to find other similar games. Since then: Oblivion, Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Neverwinter Nights 2 & Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, Fallout 3, and Gothic II. I also tried Baldur’s Gate 2 and Fallout 2, but couldn’t get past the dated graphics (if I had Windows on my EeePC 701, I’d give them a try again). Anyway, let me tell you about Drakensang.

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Tags: drakensang, kotor, witcher, oblivion, vampire the masquerade, nwn2, fallout 3, gothic series, bg2, fallout 2, stalker

It’s difficult to try and describe King’s Bounty: The Legend. As a game, it’s an interesting mix of light role-playing and turn-based strategy. The battles are almost like chess insofar as characters are placed on opposite ends of a field and you take turns making moves and trying to wipe out your opponent’s army. But that makes KB sound much more serious than it is. No, the glue holding everything together is the wonderfully ridiculous, fanciful, and insane fantasy world in which the game takes place. Do the bidding of frog royalty; resurrect dead pirates; marry a zombie — it’s all in here, plus a tonne more.

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Tags: king's bounty

I’m always surprised, listening to gaming podcasts, how little love is shown to GameTap. For a monthly ($10 USD) or yearly ($60) fee, GameTap lets you play all of the games in its library, ranging from 80s & 90s arcade and console hits to PC games released within the last year. GameTap currently offers over a thousand games from almost every genre, from publishers such as Sega, Ubisoft, THQ, Eidos, Dreamcatcher — and the list goes on. While there are some regional restrictions (some games can’t be played if you’re outside of the US) and you don’t own the games, GameTap is a really great way to try games you might otherwise have passed over. For example: Titan Quest.

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Tags: titan quest

Ubisoft had totally sold me on the idea of Far Cry 2 (Oct 2008) before the game ever came out, mostly because of their promo videos (especially, “Deceiving Your Enemy“). Semi-descructable environments (including buildings and vegetation), a huge, open world, night-and-day cycles, decent enemy AI, and fire that could spread unpredictably — all seemed like the ingredients for a dream flambé FPS.

But would I be able to run it?

I had my doubts, until I read a story stating that the game ran pretty well on modest/mid-level PCs. So, I downloaded and installed the game to see. While Far Cry 2 itself isn’t everything I’d hoped for (it’s fun, no doubt about it, just repetitive), it has performed well on my “modest,” one-year-old iMac. Below are the settings I’ve used.

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Tags: far cry 2

Since GTA IV is currently a no go, I’ve been looking around to see what other PC games might be worth picking up for the holiday. One I never gave much thought to, because of how it crushed GPUs when it came out last year, is Crysis. I came across a pretty interesting forum post over at MacRumors showing benchmark results and in-game images of Crysis on a late ’07 model aluminum 20” iMac with the following specs:

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Tags: gta iv, crysis

Fallout 3 (Oct 2008) is the game I most anticipated this year. I loved Oblivion and the idea of a post-apocalyptic RPG from the same developers seemed like an incredible idea.

The phrase “Oblivion with guns” has been tossed around a lot to describe Fallout 3, both positively and derisively. Well, it is and it isn’t. There are definitely similarities between the two Bethesda games (for better and for worse), but I’ve enjoyed this game immensely and it runs quite well on my iMac, with a solid 30-50 fps @ 1280×800 in most areas.

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Tags: fallout 3