When I was buying my MacBook (in June of this year) I was thinking that I could get the Pro but the extra 500 or so USD I would have to pay kind of put me off. I thought that I wouldn’t be gaming much and that beside the graphics card, the MacBook Pro did not have much else of use to me.

The backlit keyboard is a cool feature but I can live without. The bigger, brighter screen didn’t really matter to me as I would have an external monitor if I would ever need a bigger screen. The audio capability of the MBP is definitely better than that of the MB, but I can always use external speakers. And the DVI-out port, well, I have the $20 Apple converter. RAM and CPU wise, the MBP and MB are pretty much equal.

So when I made my final decision to buy a MacBook I realized all the MBP would do for me is let me play new games. But in June the only games I played were FIFA 07 and Civilization III which were not graphics intensive at all. I completely ignored the future and the fact that I would have this computer for at least 2 years and ended up saving 500 dollars and in a way a lot more because of all the games I wont have to buy anymore because I can’t play them. A good decision?

Not quite. So I bought the high-end 2.2 GHz MacBook with 1 gig of RAM and an Intel GMA950 integrated graphics card six months ago. But there is also a problem that I have now. After a few months I started liking to play other games, namely, first person shooters. And that was when I realized the GMA950 is not built for gaming and that my thinking half a year ago was very shortsighted. So I moaned and groaned and wished I had bought the MBP but realized I was stuck with it. So a few days ago I decided to live with it. This was after talking to friends in university who say they don’t even have time to play video games, which I guess I also will not in uni.

And now I shall get to the point of this post, which games can you play on the MacBook? I have scoured the internet and looked many a forum for hints and warnings and these have helped in my game-buying decisions. And without further ado, here are my personal results with the notebook I described earlier.

Games that work

Call of Duty 2 (Mac) – works great with 1280 x 1024 and max graphics, there is sometimes lag when there is lots of action but definitely more than playable.

Civilization IV (Mac) – just bought this one and it was an interesting situation. I installed the game and the patch and was greeted with a message saying my computer’s hardware could not handle the game in the in-game menu, clicked OK, and the game has been working great ever since. Slight lag, but not noticeable and does not impede enjoyment of the game. I recommend this game for anyone with a high-end MacBook or any Mac for that matter.

Civilization III (Windows) – works like a charm, but I don’t think the game has a widescreen resolution option so it’s only slightly stretched.

SimCity 4 (Windows) – works but at full graphics and highest resolution, gets laggy when moving around and building. Not recommended.

GTA: San Andreas (Windows) – Works quite well at 800 x 600 with max graphics but gets annoyingly laggy at times. Playable but not enjoyable to the point of being extremely fun like the GTA series is on the PS2.

FIFA 06, 07, 08 (Windows) – all work great at max settings but somehow the graphics do not look as good as they do on my PC with a 256 Mb GeForce 5500. I personally like FIFA 07 the most out of those three.

Madden 06 (Windows) – works great at max graphics at 1024 x 768 (widescreen). It wasn’t a very addictive game for me though.

NFS: Porsche Unlimited (Windows) – works awesome, obviously. It’s like 8 years old.

And all of the older games I’ve tried. So if you don’t mind playing slightly old games, the MacBook’s video card is good enough for you and even some relatively newer games work.

Games that don’t work

NFS: Underground (Windows) – doesn’t initiate after install, didn’t bother to research into it.

Juiced (Windows) – too laggy to be playable at all.

Battlefield 2 (Windows) – nope.

Call of Duty 4 (Windows) – this is my dream game and I have no machine to play it on. The sadness.

The Verdict

The MacBook is definitely not a gaming machine. That’s what the MBP was made for. I guess that’s why the MacBook page on apple.com does not feature a “Graphics” tab like all the other Macs. If you like playing new, graphics intensive games, do not buy a MacBook, go for the Pro (you should still buy a Mac though) but if you’re like me and can live (at least somewhat) with older FPS titles or not-so-graphics-intensive-games then the MacBook is an affordable solution for a portable computer. But don’t get me wrong, the MacBook is a great computer with great specs, the only thing it’s missing is a good graphics card.

By the way, the new MacBooks (revamped a few months ago) feature a new graphics card, the Intel GMA X3100 with 144 Mb of shared RAM. I have not read anything about this new card but I would guess it is somewhat better.

So I queued for 10 hours last Saturday to get my Hong Kong Rugby Sevens tickets and was lucky enough to get them. There were 5000 tickets on sale this year and everyone was allowed to buy 2 max.

I came to the stadium at 5 A.M. and there were already over a thousand people queuing (most with sleeping bags and tents) when I began waiting. There were 2 guys that went around and counted how many people there were and according to them me and Justin were something like #1632 in line, so according to them we were safe and we would get our tickets. But that didn’t stop our worrying for the next few hours. We stopped fretting when the most confusing announcement came over the PA and guaranteed that “we were [not] beyond this point” (people who queued will know what I’m talking about) and that we would get our tickets. Eventually.

Standing in line until 11 (that’s 6 hours folks) wasn’t even that bad except that our lack of food, lack of cellphone (I forgot to bring mine) and no entertainment other than the other people in line and ourselves did make it a bit monotonous. When we finally got into the stadium at 11 we had to wait for over 2 hours to be called to get our tickets. But in the end, I walked out with these in my hands, tickets to all 3 days for just $1080. The wait was definitely worth it: