Mac Games Here:

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Originally slated to arrive last month, it looks like the Mac version of Batman: Arkham City is on track for release by the end of December. In development at Feral Interactive, the game was released on consoles and Windows in fall 2011 and recently came to Nintendo's new Wii U.

Feral was responsible for porting the original Batman: Arkham Asylum to Mac last November. It has handled other high-profile conversions such as BioShock, BioShock 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

The Mac version of Batman: Arkham City will sell for US$40 and features all of the DLC released for other versions of the game. This means the additional Harley Quinn's Revenge side story, plus the Catwoman, Nightwing and Robin packs are included.

In other Mac game news, Aspyr Media has launched Rollercoaster Tycoon 3: Platinum on the Mac App Store, Steam and its own digital storefront, GameAgent. You can get it or any other title for 25 percent off on GameAgent using the discount code GameAgent25.

12-12-12

www.tuaw.com

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The critically acclaimed RPG The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is now available on the Mac App Store. The development team promises that your choices really do matter, and will determine the fate of the people and kingdoms in the game. You’ll fight blood-thirsty monsters as protagonist Geralt of Rivia, as well as navigate politics, lies, and gorgeous environments.

The full Enhanced Edition includes all the extras in an uncut version for $19.99, for a limited time on the App Store. It was previously available on Good Old Games and Steam.

Only the latest Macs are able to handle this game, so the developers at CD Projekt RED have prepared a way for you to make sure your Mac can run it, graphically. Head over to the Witcher 2 web page and check your Mac’s compatibility, either by downloading an app that will check automatically or by clicking through some web buttons to specify which specific Mac you own. My mid-2011 Macbook Air isn’t able to run this new edition, unfortunately, but yours may, so be sure to check it out.

You are Geralt of Rivia, a witcher, a member of a mysterious caste of professional beast-slayers created through brutal training and mutation. Witchers specialize in tracking down and killing monsters. Long gone are the days when beasts lived near human settlements in every forest and cave, and the folk of the Northern Kingdoms held witchers in high regard. The age of elf and dwarf massacres has come, a time when men rival monsters in the evil they do, a time when mutated witchers are regarded as dangerous outcasts, neither human nor nonhuman. Amidst this chaos, Geralt is drawn into a bloody conspiracy. Accused of killing a king, the witcher embarks on a solitary quest to clear his name and uncover the mysteries of his past.

12-13-12

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There’s a new game in town, coming to the Mac early this year, according to Haemimont Games, developer of Tropico. Omerta: City of Gangsters has you work your way up the criminal scene of 1920’s Atlantic City. Start running small jobs, recruit new gang members, and take down other mobsters, grabbing their territory as you take them out. Eventually, you’ll set up your own city-wide crime syndicate and rule Atlantic City’s seedy underground.

Omerta is a rule or code that prohibits divulging the information about the activities of a criminal organization. The game of the same name will feature an historically acurate Atlantic City with 20 unique districts, each with its own real-world landmarks. You’ll be able to play a story-based campaign or an open-world sandbox free play mode.

You’ll get to plan coups, expand your territory, exhort the competition and bribe the authorities, all while planning out tactical combat with other criminals, pull off bank heists, robberies, and street heists. There will be 15 unique characters to control, each with their own personality, background and skills to take in account. There will also be some RPG-like skill trees to help your character become even better at crime! Of course, no game would be complete without competitive and cooperative online multiplayer, and Omerta: City Of Gangsters promises the same, with persistent gangs populating the online play systems.

Sounds like a fairly cool game, and the video above has piqued my interest in this cross between a city-building sim and a strategy game. We’ll be sure to let you know when we hear more about it, of course!

Omerta: City of Gangsters arrives January 31 in Europe and February 12 in North America on PC and Xbox 360, as well. Here’s hoping that the Mac version won’t be far behind.

1-9-13

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Fifteen years after its release in 1998, Valve Software's groundbreaking first-person shooter Half-Life has made its Mac debut. While its sequel, Half-Life 2, and other games based on Valve's later Source engine have been available on the platform for years, the original Half-Life has remained beyond the reach of Mac gamers without resorting to Boot Camp or other workarounds.

Half-Life is still listed as being Windows-only on the Steam store, but we've confirmed that the option to download it for Mac does appear when selecting the game from within your Steam library. Being such an old game, it runs very well on lower-end systems.

You can buy Half-Life for US$9.99 from the Steam store, but you might just find that you already own a copy since the game has been included with various Mac-compatible compilations even though it was only made available for the platform today.

1-25-13

www.tuaw.com

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I grew up on a farm, and it wasn’t exactly a riot — so I’m surprised anyone would want to simulate farm-life for fun. Then again, we never had a 10-ton Lamborghini tractor. And if we did, I probably wouldn’t have been allowed near it.

Anyway, that’s exactly the sort of thing you can tool around in with Farming Simulator 2013, the latest in a long line of Farming Simulator titles, which just hit the Mac App Store today.

Get yourself into all kinds of wild trouble: harvest crops, take care of farm animals — and then sell everything when you’ve had enough of the mooing and the cow poop. There’s considerable detail in the new version, including lots of big, big tractors, a wide variety of crops such as sugar beet and potatoes, and chicken and sheep to run after, as they plod blindly through all kinds of foul muck in an effort to ruin your day. That last bit’s probably not in the game, it’s just a flashback.

There’s even a multiplayer mode that lets you manage a farm with nine other farmers, online or locally. FS 2013 is $28.

2-7-13

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Borderlands 2 is unequivocally the best first-person shooter available for the Mac. Right now it’s half off at the Steam store, making it $30, meaning you can snag a deal better even than the Mac App Store price of $45.

like its predecessor, Borderlands 2 combines fast-paced combat with role playing concepts like a skill tree, a witty, well-written storyline and a staggering degree of weapon selection. The Steam version also includes multiplayer, something the Mac App Store version doesn’t currently support. Better hurry if you want to catch the deal, though — Borderlands 2 is back at full price tomorrow morning.

2-10-13

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There's a new Lord of the Rings game on the block and it's coming to Mac later this month. Oh, and it features characters and a world that are literally made out of blocks. Feral Interactive is preparing a port of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment's LEGO Lord of the Rings, released last fall on other platforms, and will be launching it on the Mac App Store and via its own site on February 21 for US$29.99.

The game adheres to the formula employed by other LEGO titles from developer Traveler's Tales, such as LEGO Batman and Star Wars, and sees the Fellowship of the Ring battling orcs and other baddies from Tolkien's tomes while assembling things out of LEGO bricks to help them on their quest. Two players will be able to collaborate on the adventure which will offer the opportunity to unlock more than 80 playable characters. (Let us just suggest that you keep plastic Frodo and the gang away from the fires of Mt. Doom.)

If this sounds like the sort of adventure you'd like to embark on, you'll need a Mac running OS X 10.7.5 with 4 GB of RAM and 256 MB of video memory to play.

2-12-13

www.tuaw.com

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Borderlands 2 was one of the best games to hit the Mac -- and plenty of other platforms -- last year. Today, Mac gamers can check out the new DLC, Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt. And even better, a new patch makes it possible to play co-op with PC friends.

Big Game Hunt is the latest expansion to Borderlands 2, adding additional missions and environments after the main campaign. As you might have guessed, the new content focuses on the robot-armed adventurer, Sir Hammerlock. The DLC features an entirely new continent of Pandora, and adds in some high-level loot (and really, that's why we play Borderlands 2, no?).

The team at Aspyr has done a fantastic job keeping Mac gamers in step with the PC release of Borderlands 2, and a Steam update brings the game up to 1.3.1. Biggest advancement? You can now play Borderlands 2 with PC players.

Not only does that mean you can finally link up with some friends for looting on Steam, but it really expands one of the best features of Borderlands 2: co-op. No reason to worry about matchmaking into a game, now. Unfortunately, our note from Aspyr says this will work "for a time," which I assume means until the PC version patches up.

Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt is available now on Steam or Aspyr's GameAgent for $9.99. But members of GameAgent can save 25 percent through a code on the site's front page (you must sign up first, though).

2-13-13

www.maclife.com

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Beamdog and Overhaul Games announced today that Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition will be released on February 22 on the Mac, not two months after its release on the iPad last December. You can pre-order and pre-download the OS X version of the game now on the Beamdog website.

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is an updated version of the original Bioware fantasy role playing game set in the Forgotten Realms, itself a part of the Dungeons & Dragon’s universe. The Mac version of the game will have an enhanced version of the Infinity Engine, a Tales of the Sword Coast expansion pack, and new adventures and party members to quest with.

The new interface and graphics engine will improve and optimize the visuals and control interface for high resolution widescreen displays, and online multiplayer has been updated to include a matchmaking ability. Games can be played across platforms, meaning that folks on iPad, Mac, PC, and Android can all play Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition together.

The new adventure, The Black Pits, lets you take a full party through 15 new battles in an attempt to escape the hellish land of the Underdark. It’s a whole new stand-alone adventure with over six hours of gameplay added to the already voluminous Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition playtime. New characters that join your story include Dorn Il-Khan, “a half-orc Blackguard whose otherworldly patron grants him terrible powers in the form of his black sword and unholy spells,” Neera the Wild Mage, “a half-elf wild mage slowly coming to terms with her enormous magical potential,” and Rasaad yn Bashir, a Calishite Monk who is “demonstrating his monastic arts to the people of Nashkel.”

The OS X version will release on February 22, 2013, and will cost $20 directly from Beamdog. A Mac App Store version is planned for a later release.

2-16-13

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We’ve got lots of love for the LEGO series games. They often have an uncanny ability to capture the feel of their parent titles — in a way that’s cuter than a basketful of kittens, but much more fun. The Lord of the Rings is the latest title to join the collection, and it’s coming to OS X next week.

The Windows version of LEGO LoTR garnered decent-to-good ratings, so expect (hopefully) the same for the Mac version. The game will be published by Feral Interactive, one of the two big names in ported Mac games (the other being Aspyr). LEGO LoTR differs from almost all other LEGO titles in that it contains real dialogue, taken directly from the movies; it also has a free-roam mode that’ll let you wander over Middle Earth, something not usually found in the highly linear gameplay of the other LEGO games.

Even more interesting things about this news is that the game was just released for Windows back in October last year, a scant three months ago; in terms of how long it usually takes Windows games to arrive on for the Mac, that’s a blink of an eye. Another indication that Mac gaming is starting to get real.

The game is avaialble now for pre-order at $30. Minimum requirements seem pretty modest:

OS: Mac OS X 10.7.5
Processor: 1.4GHz Intel
RAM: 4GB
Hard Disk: 8GB
Graphics: 256MB

2-16-13

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