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Getting A Macbook Pro "Penryn," Need Games
Demo318
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
I'm buying an older Macbook Pro and was wondering if there were some games that anyone could recommend. Right now, the only thing I'm anticipating being able to play is spore, but I'm looking for something better.
I spent most of my gaming career on xbox & xbox 360, so I want to milk my MBP's NVIDIA 8400 and play some great-looking games. Any suggestions?
I spent most of my gaming career on xbox & xbox 360, so I want to milk my MBP's NVIDIA 8400 and play some great-looking games. Any suggestions?
Demo318 on
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Buy a laptop that has something better than an 8400?
The 8400 is pretty weak, you'll be able to play source engine games in medium. But that's about as good as it'll get probably.
The question is, do you want to do your gaming in Windows or Mac OS X? While the Mac isn't quite as devoid of games as is often suggested, you'll definitely find much greater variety on Windows. Be that as it may, gaming on Mac OS X is doable, removes the need to have to partition your drive for Boot Camp, avoids having to reboot just to play a game, and by buying Mac games you'll encourage them to be released.
If you do want to game with OS X, here's a selection of games I've been playing recently:
* Command & Conquer 3 / Red Alert 3 - both of these have been ported to Intel Macs, and run quite well on an 8600. Be prepared to lower some of the detail settings, but they ought to run well.
* Unreal Tournament 2004 - until UT3 finally comes out for the Mac, this will run like a dream on your MBP, and is plenty of fun.
* World of Goo - one of the most impressive puzzle games of the last year, and runs perfectly so long as you don't mind tweaking one file to run it at full resolution.
* Lego Batman / Indiana Jones / Star Wars / etc. - these will, again, run beautifully on your MBP, and are good ports with support for USB game pads and so on.
* Civilization IV - the "Beyond The Sword" expansion comes out this month, and the base game and the Warlords expansion are well worth getting. Just don't expect to be able to leave it alone once you begin.
* Sid Meier's Pirates! - still looks surprisingly good, and is plenty of fun while it lasts. It's cheap, so go grab it.
* Call of Duty 4 - be prepared to tone down some of the graphics slightly, but otherwise this'll run beautifully with the most recent patches.
Now, on top of these, a lot of classic games get ported to the Mac. If you don't mind the older graphics, Diablo 2 and Starcraft remain compelling and ought to help you pass the time until Diablo III and Starcraft 2 - both of which will run on the Mac natively. Then there's Quake, Quake 2, and Quake 3, all of which can be run even if you only have the Windows discs by downloading source ports and dropping in your resources. Warcraft III runs natively on the Mac, and is fun, and recently I've been playing The Sims 2 until I finally cave in and buy The Sims 3 (which is Mac and PC on the same disc, à la Spore).
Advantages:
1. Bigger game library
2. You can play all the games you already own
3. Steam support (a big one for me, I've purchased a lot of games over Steam - this gives me access to all of them no matter where I am)
Disadvantages:
1. Wasted HD space due to an extra OS
2. Have to reboot to use games
This is what keeps Boot Camp set up on my Mac. As much as I love the aforementioned games in OS X, I've got to have my TF2 fix.
I pray for the day Valve makes an OSX version of Steam.
To answer the OP:
If its gonna have the 8600m in it (the same as my mac) then it is more than capable of playing most games on medium at least.
Blizzard made promise to release all their games on mac too so you have WoW, Starcraft 1 & soon to be 2 and Diablo 2 I think....
You have Spore, Sims 3 and maaaaybe Sims 2, Guitar Hero 3, Call of Duty 4, Need for Speed Carbon.. and some other lesser known games which I cant remember
Alternatively you can use Boot Camp (super easy & with the Win 7 RC you don't even have to buy a copy of Windows till next March! Assuming you don't already have a copy) and then you have the majority of the Steam Store available. Pretty much anything built on the HL2 SDK is good to go on medium to high settings. If you haven't played the Orange Box then you should. Also there are some really good mods which are worth getting + they're free!
Question: Why are you getting an older Mac? Right around now Apple Stores still have some End of Line stock available which means you can get a fairly recent model for cheap. I just bought a Macbook for £509 (with 17% student discount) you should look into it!
WoW, Sims 3, Diablo 2, Starcraft, UT2k4.
None of those games are going to look amazing, however.
Oh, and CoD4 is available for Mac.