There’s been a lot of gaming activity on Apple platforms, with several big announcements in recent weeks.
First off, Netflix continues to nab some big titles for its growing catalog of games on iOS and iPadOS. In October, it was announced that one of my all-time favorite games, Dead Cells, which won a MacStories Selects award in 2019, would join Netflix Games.
More recently, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, which includes GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas, was released simultaneously on iOS and iPadOS as part of Netflix games. According to Kotaku, these Netflix versions of the games, which are also available as separate App Store purchases, have been updated to fix visual glitches and spruce things up a bit, too.
Resident Evil 4 from Capcom is out on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Capcom is currently offering the game for 50% off, with DLC 25% off for a limited time.
Based on early reviews, the consensus seems to be that, at least when it comes to mobile devices, the game is best on an iPad Pro, which isn’t terribly surprising. Unlike non-Apple platforms, RE4’s graphics options have been locked on the iPhone and iPad, and frame rates are capped at 30fps. Nonetheless, early reports indicate that the game still has trouble hitting 30fps at times, especially on the iPhone, including the iPhone 15 Pro models. On mobile devices, the game has the same onscreen controls as Resident Evil Village, that cover a lot of the game’s action, so a separate controller is recommended. Despite the visual hiccups, TouchArcade concludes that the Resident Evil 4 remake is ‘an easy recommendation.’ I haven’t had a chance to play Resident Evil 4 yet, but plan to do so over the holidays.
A couple of game developers shared interesting Mac sales statistics this fall too. The developers of The Pale Beyond mentioned in a late November video that 5.26% of its players were playing the game on the Steam Deck compared to 1.36% on the Mac. Both numbers are tiny compared to Windows but show the kind of odds that game developers are up against when porting games to the Mac. Similar statistics led Valve to announce in October that Counter-Strike 2 would not be coming to the Mac because its players were ‘less than one percent of active CS:GO players.’ Recent Apple silicon Macs are better suited to gaming than ever before, but obviously, there’s still a long way to go.
Finally, I’ll leave you with a game recommendation for the holidays. GRID Legends was ported to the Mac by Feral Interactive earlier this month, and it’s a lot of fun. I’ve covered Feral Interactive ports of GRID games before, and this Mac-only version of Legends is every bit as good as earlier ports.
I’ve been playing GRID Legends on and off over the past week and love the story mode and tight integration with third-party controllers. The racing game, which debuted on other platforms in late 2022, runs smoothly at high frame rates when playing at 1080p on my Mac Studio but struggles at higher resolutions. I recently switched to playing on an M3 Max MacBook Pro that Apple sent me for testing, which kicked performance up significantly. Plus, the game looks absolutely gorgeous on the MacBook Pro’s Liquid Retina XDR display.
