There are Linux Gamers, but also Mac Gamers... and now there are some nice games for the Mac this year!
Both Linux and Mac Gamers are not being taken serious all that much. And understandably as well.
On digg i found a link that shows 5 awesome games that are on the Mac now as well or coming up!
First one is from an upcoming company, odd name, Blizzard.
They call the game Starcraft 2 and it actually looks quite well done. With a name like that, I guess there was a Starcraft 1 as well. Ah well, have a look anyway.
Second is Spore. Some guy in a garage I think made this. As his plans are to put it on every intelligent device available, so even the Mac. Not sure if this game will catch on. Time will tell.
Again a Blizzard game, these ppl are busy and it seems they take making games seriously.
It's called World of Warcraft : wrath of Lich King. In an earlier episode, somebody must have pissed of this Lich King. Seems it will also connect to the internet and let you play with others! Awesome! I think this game will make it big, really!
Call of duty 4 is the next one. A FPS and this time no Germans! This game will flunk just because of that of course.
Neverwinter Nights 2. These guys must have looked at Oblivion really closely and stole quite a good deal of ideas! Maybe I will check this one out!
Here is the link, but don't trust what you read there. Makes me look like a liar. How rude!
'Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.'
Benjamin Franklin
I recall some pretty nice games being packaged with Feisty Fawn Ubuntu-- on the install disc, not even downloads. I particularly liked the Light Cycle game. Sure, it's basically a variation of Snake, but it's in 3d and even though the AI is unfairly good at it, it's still fun.
(If you want Linux games, you can always run WINE, though I don't know how compatible it is with some of the newer stuff.)
As a recovering Mac gamer, I have many warm thoughts regarding Ambrosia software. For a long time, if you wanted a Mac game, you went there. EV nova is one of my favorites.
Blizzard has always, in my memory, supported the Mac. The version of Warcraft 2 I had contained both the PC and Mac versions on the same disc. I believe Starcraft was also supported, but I could be wrong as I am too lazy to run a google search for it.
Cool news, though.
L337 is not a word. BA7F is a word.
PSN name: DoubtingTom396 Frie-hend meeeee uuuuup!
I haven't owned a Mac since OS 8.5, and gaming is what finally made me switch to a PC and not look back since. The only two companies that I could count own for good games back then were Blizzard, and pre-Microsoft Bungie. Glad to see at least one of those two are still holding it down in Macmagicland.
I suppose now you could just run XP in bootcamp and play any game you wanted.
The last time I remember an enjoyable gaming experience on a mac was in grade school (keep in mind that I haven't been really looking either) playing Oregon Trail and Odell Down Under which oddly enough reminds me of the tide pool phase of spore.
Steam ID: ihateuyeahu
Xbox Live: ihateuyeahu
BNet: idislikeumildly
Warcraft III is what finally brought me to the Mac. I had picked up the game for my PC, but when I installed it, I got no sound. Updated the drivers, but now no picture. Finally got it up and running, and it ran like crap. I was at the point where I was going to need a new PC soon, so I started to look at buying a new PC.
Around this time, I ended up with a corrupted kernel. The best answer I got was that Zone Alarm screwed it up. I was getting pretty sick of this kind of stuff, as I had been plugging $$$ into my machine for awhile, upgrading the CPU, RAM, and video card. But the more I did, the more little stuff that started to go wrong. Well, the kernel was not little.
So I noticed that my copy of Warcraft III also contained the Mac version. Around this time we started seeing the first Switch commercials. It was damn good timing. My PC needed replacing, it had been frustrating me for over a year, and the new game I really wanted to play was good to go on the Mac.
After a little research, I did realize that the Mac would not be a gaming machine, but it did have enough games and ports to hold me over, since I was mostly gaming on my Xbox and Gamecube by this point. I decided that any games I got for the Mac would be a bonus. I could live with this since my real PC addiction was Civ III, which had a Mac version out as well.
Turns out Warcraft III was not a cool as I thought it would be, but six years later, I now have three Macs, and I don't see buying a PC in the foreseeable future.
Now, with the recent releases of games for the Mac, I'd really like to see a Steam equivalent for the Mac. If you think trying to buy PC games retail is a pain, try finding good selection of Mac games. There are a few games I'd have grabbed on impulse if Steam delivered Mac games. There is just not a good place to buy digital downloads of Mac games. Apple should be doing this, but they still do not take games serious for their platform.
Xbox Live: JayhawkerGWJ
last.fm: JayhawkerGWJ
I know the feeling
6 Macs, 3 iPods, iPhone, AppleTV, 2 airport base stations, iSight, Wireless Keyboard, countless cords and do-hickeys. Probably a multi-thousand dollar machine that I've forgotten, too. Entire immediate family is on Macs, too.
I really enjoyed Penny Arcade Adventures on my iMac. Big beautiful screen and great sound system to enjoy the game.
We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all.
I run World of Warcraft on the release candidate 4 of WINE on Ubuntu 8.04. Steam I am running on CrossOver Games. And I also am playing Frets on Fire, which is fun.
I do not feel like an overlooked gamer.
As of this week, I am running XP with Boot Camp on my Mac and catching up on some games I've missed recently. I've also been playing AoC, and am pretty happy with the performance. There have been precious few big titles to play in OSX, so I am glad to see some coming our way.
I am slowly but surely gathering Mac products as well, what with multiple iPods, airport base station, and the Macbook for my wife. I'm trying to convert the extended family.
XBox Live: OldMud
AoC is running okay on your iMac? Which one do you have? Mine is a 2 Ghz, and I have 2 gigs of RAM. The Witcher crushed it, so I had my doubts that AoC would be acceptable.
Xbox Live: JayhawkerGWJ
last.fm: JayhawkerGWJ
My iMac is the summer '07 2.4 GHz model. I added 1 gig of ram courtesy of Newegg (that's $100 if you order from Apple...), to bring me up to 2 GB. Now when I say I am happy with the performance, bear in mind that I am running AoC on the Low setting. I get 25-35 fps in the wild, and I was down to 16-20 in Tortage. Nothing stellar, I know, but a big improvement over the hand-me-down PC I was trying to play on.
XBox Live: OldMud
That's more CPU, and maybe a bump in video card? Mine has the Raedon 1600 with 128 MB or RAM.
I could get The Witcher to run on the lowest settings, but it was seriously ugly, and still laggy. Turning on anything else drove it to slide show. TF2, on the other hand, ran perfectly fine. I kind of assumed The Witcher would not require so much power. But it seems like AoC is a big hog. Maybe I will pick up a new iMac sometime in the next 6 months to a year, and pass this one down to my daughter. she's not much interested in my old eMac, as it is just 800 Mgz, and runs like a turd.
Xbox Live: JayhawkerGWJ
last.fm: JayhawkerGWJ
Yes, mine has the 256MB card. I don't know if the 128 will run it. The game really is a hog.
XBox Live: OldMud
I've been using my MacBook Pro as my primary gaming computer for the past year, though most of the "good stuff" runs in my little Boot Camp partition. I still do make an effort to get Mac versions of games that have that option though. Currently I have the aforementioned WoW and Starcraft installed, along with Eschalon Book 1 (nice little old-school RPG), The Ur-Quan Masters, Rise of Nations Gold and a smattering of Popcap games. I think with the Boot Camp option most Macs are VERY viable gaming systems.
When you misplace something you do not "loose" it. When you sneak a look at something you do not "peak" at it. And for God's sake the words "funner" and "funnest" do not exist.
Hey, I'm a huge Mac booster, but I'd say Macs are barely viable gaming machines right now. The fact is, being a PC gamer means upgrades, and Mac are much more static systems. It would be great if that trend could change.
If developers could sell enough copies of their games, designing for the Mac would make things better for both developers and gamers. It would be so much easier to program for stable, static systems than for whatever PC combination Joe Blow happens to have. Maybe he has a Dell, a budget model, or he has put together his own intense rig. Maybe he put together his own rig, but he really did a poor job of picking parts. Compared to Macs, PCs have to be a nightmare to program for.
If gamers flocked to the Mac, I'm pretty confident they would see more stable games, less need to upgrade, and actually, just better quality due to development costs going down. Not to mention if that trend ever started, Apple would make some gamer specific changes that would only improve the situation more.
But i never try to convince a PC gamer to switch to the Mac. I'm comfortable with a Mac because I am comfortable doing the bulk of my gaming on my consoles, while using my Mac for everything else i need to do with a computer.
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