Discussion on Games that are worth playing on Mac(Performance)

[Yayap7]

I know there are quite a lot of games available for Mac these days. There are plenty of Mac versions of games on Steam, Apple App Store, Humble Bundle, GoG, etc. I am mainly a PC gamer these days(RIP good consoles, though PS4 is solid) and have a decent desktop that I do my main gaming on(i5, 8GB RAM, GTX 780).
I do use my MacBook Pro, though not a whole lot for gaming. I did purposely buy this one for more gaming potential though -2013 15" MBP, i7, 16GB RAM, Iris Pro and GTX 750M graphics, 500GB SSD). That said, I have found only a handful of games that are worth playing on this, one of them being Elder Scrolls Online(ZOS actually has a pretty good Mac client which is quite nice).

We can all play games windowed mode, 720x1260, low to mid graphics settings and have a decent frame rate. That's not a great experience in my opinion. -yes, I know that's not totally realistic these days but I'm just making the point that even though there's a good library for games on Mac, not all of them are worth playing because plain lack of hardware and thermal horsepower..
A few such games not worth playing on Mac in my opinion are TombRaider, Borderlands, GW2 Mac client(though Bootcamp Windows and I got GW2 performing well at a good resolution and graphics settings), Even Tell Tale's games are a bit rough on Mac.

I know this isn't the case for every Mac user and that the iMacs are probably quite a bit better in performance but at the same time, screen resolutions on Macs are getting higher and higher and so it's becoming less and less likely to be able to actually play a game at native res with reasonable frame rate. I know my Macbook Pro isn't fit for native 2880x1800 gaming. And so I have to bring it down to less than 1080p most of the time..
I could say much more and I apologize for this poorly constructed rant..

Too Long, Didn't Read::
Point is, there is no good list or source of info on games that are actually worth it to play and experience on Mac. I want a solid 30+ fps gaming experience wherever I game and the Mac is no exception.
So, what games have you played on Mac that offer a decent or good experience? What Macintosh do you use? What resolution, settings, and fps do you go for usually? Can you tolerate screen tearing? I can't stand screen tearing, thus having to use vertical sync.

 

[bobbytomorow]

If its high quality 3D games I find anything up to 2011-ish runs quite well with decent settings. For example, Batman Arkham Asylum, Hitman Absolution, any Source game (I play a lot of Day of Defeat Source). Basically any game from the PS3/360 generation that has a Mac version in my experience runs good on our hardware (your 750m is pretty much the same GPU as my 650m). I refer to Steam system requirements or I will google a particular game I'm interested in to see benchmarks before I buy/install it.

Not to say we can't run anything post 2011, just thats about the threshold before we got to start dialling down graphic settings.

 

[Washac]

I find this a bit hard to answer because what works really well on machine will not work quite so well on another, and that would include under Bootcamp, all comes down to Graphics card, memory, CPU.

I think you really need to discuss what games run best on your setup with others who use the same setup.

I have just finished playing Batman Arkham Asylum on my setup which is below, and I know Batman Arkham City runs fine also both on fullscreen. Online games such as Guild Wars 2 and the Elder Scrolls Online , Warcraft run fine for me, but as I said that is on MY setup which really does not help you, and the list you would like to see would not cover all spec Macs.

 

[Suture]

The only "premium" games I've come across on Mac that runs well in native resolution are Diablo 3, Marvel Heroes, and older Source games. I know there's more and someone will chime in, but I'm going based off my library of games. There are certainly good ports of games out there that run well (Deus Ex, Borderlands series, etc.) but they take a monster performance hit at native resolution on the Mac versions. My iMac is in my signature. It will easily surpass 30 FPS in BL, Deux Ex, etc. at 1440P -- but I don't like games at 30 FPS, so I lower the resolution to 1600x900 on those to get a smoother and higher frame rate.

 

[Dark Void]

Would you be opposed to strict suggestions requiring boot camp? I see you have it set up.

In any case - what I would say is that it truly depends on what you consider "worth playing." Sorry to give the lame "it depends" answer but it's very accurate in this case I believe.

For example, I think the original Guild Wars up to the Eye of The North expansion is worth playing (needs bootcamp) and that game is so old that it performs well on putting food at the end of a tubing system that hamsters run through. You can literally get 100s of framerates on virtually any GPU and that game is amazing even if its a ghostown at this point.

However, if AAA games are all you consider worth playing, you're unfortunately out of luck from the jump in terms of using a Mac in basically every case. They just have very midrange GPUs in the greatest cases.

I can speak from much experience regarding this topic if you have any other specific questions. I am a long time gamer (now retired) and have much experience tweaking games to run on considerably poor hardware. I ran many games on my 2010 MacBook Pro back in the day with its integrated 320M GPU, and albeit 1280x800 resolution I was able to squeeze everything out of that system at the time.

 

[Yayap7]

You are all correct. It's definitely a "it depends" scenario and is pretty subjective to the person. I guess I did fly off the handle a bit with it being purely subjective and being a bit ranty..

I since I have a PC that I mainly use for gaming, I look at the what the game's performance would be like on my MacBook Pro as most of the determining factor for whether I will download it or not. I just hate screen tearing and -30fps.. Then if I've played it or not the type of game it is, and the situations that would cause me to play it on the MacBook.
Blizzard and Source/Valve games do pretty well on Mac.
I guess my main pet peeve is that Macs keep getting higher and higher resolutions -which is great but unless it's an iMac or Pro, the game resolution will have to be scaled down to run well. And Mac doesn't seem to do well with higher types of AA other than FXAA..
For me, it's not worth playing if I have to scale the resolution down a lot, no AA, low graphics and even then poor frame rate, add mouse acceleration or delay because of Mac and vertical sync respectively...

So I tend to play games like Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm a bit, Banner Saga, FTL, Transistor/Bastion, Half Life, maybe a bit of Bioshock, Mark of the Ninja -mostly "smaller" games.
Though if I Bootcamp, I would be able to do Skyrim, Morrowind, Guild Wars 2, Bioshock, Dark Souls, and some other games relatively well.

I would love to see FalloutShelter and Vain Glory come to desktop though.
We need more Mac OS cross platform games/functionality!

 

[TallManNY]

On my computer XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Left For Dead 1 and 2, Borderlands 2, Bioshock Infinite all worked well. I just finished Metro 2033 Redux and thought it was great. But I'm not a stickler for high frame rates. So something that I consider playable might not work for you. I kind of wish that all games had FPS indicators built in so you could check stuff like that easily.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

For those wanting to keep an eye on FPS, just in case anyone isn't already aware they have built a counter into Steam now which you can turn on in preferences and set to whichever corner you prefer it to display.

Otherwise, once in a while I notice a game's options may include an FPS counter if you're poking around in them. This probably isn't news to anyone but I guess just mentioning it for the sake of being complete.

Last but not least, over at Mac Gamer HQ they are presently developing an FPS counter for Mac games to test with. I am presently involved in a closed beta for this and cannot recall if they prefer I say zero about it or not beyond mentioning its existence. If you head over to the site you could always contact them directly with questions about that, etc. I bring this up just as good news coming hopefully soon for being able to see how more Mac games are performing.

By the way, I have not tried this but I believe that Steam counter probably works in non-Steam games added to and launched from Steam so long as they don't have issues with the overlay. I might be wrong there but I thought I heard that someplace and just hadn't bothered trying it out.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

Oh, and there is no need to reboot for the original Guild Wars. It runs flawlessly with Wineskin and no special settings required. It's rated platinum as such over at the WineHQ database. I have recently played it for some time and had it running at 1440p, max settings, ran great. I was impressed by how good the game looks too. To me anyway, it does not look as old as it is. It still has a nice world to see and explore, etc.

 

[Suture]

I played a lot of the first GW for a while years ago, was in a really good guild. Was surprised how well the game ran even on lower systems. Never tried GW2 because I got away from those types of games. But loved how competitive GW was.