The 25 best Mac games you can get right now

The 25 best Mac games you can get right now

Macs have never had the best reputation for gaming. Whether because Apple preferred to market them as creative computing powerhouses or because their alumnium shells could cook eggs after a heavy graphics session, the lowly Mac spent much of its youth in the gaming outhouse, suffering with years-behind releases and sub-par ports. Mercifully for Mac owners, things have changed. There is a growing and substantial crop of computing capers that you can beam to your Mac through the App Store and Steam – which can more than hold a candle to PC alternatives. Here are 25 of the best games you can grab right now for your Mac.

PORTAL 2

Yes, the original Portal is the one that everybody raves about, and even a decade after release, it’s still absolutely brilliant and well worth circling back on. But the sequel is even larger, even nuttier, and arguably just as compelling of an experience – even if it wasn’t quite as impactful overall.

HOMEWORLD REMASTERED COLLECTION

Homeworld in many ways defined the real-time strategy genre when it was released in 1998. What’s so special about the Remastered Collection? Well, it gives you both the original Homeworld and Homeworld 2, as well as Homeworld Classic and its successor, alongside a Steam Multiplayer mode – that’s a lot of Homeworlds.

HEROES OF THE STORM

Like other MOBAs, Heroes of the Storm is a five-on-five battle for map domination, as you team up to bash down the enemy’s turrets before taking down their base… unless they do it to you first. It’s loaded with StarCraft, Diablo, Warcraft, and Overwatch characters and is a lot more streamlined than others, making it the perfect first genre entry. And besides, all these MOBAs are free-to-play, so there’s no harm in giving them all a shot.

TOMB RAIDER

The new Tomb Raider cribs some fundamentals from Sony’s Uncharted and reintroduces the iconic heroine. It’s pretty fantastic, delivering an epic, cinematic adventure through unforgiving wilds, pairing melee action with gunplay, stealth attacks, exploration, and a bit of puzzle-solving. It’s one of the absolute best action experiences you’ll find on Mac today.

ROCKET LEAGUE

If you’ve never played Rocket League, it’s basically futuristic, gravity-defying football – played in cars. Souped-up, shiny cars roaring around neon-lit arenas. It’s bright, brash and thoroughly playable. Expect multiplayer mayhem, richly rendered cartoon graphics and instantly addictive gameplay. There’s a full single-player mode, but it’s in the online 8-player games where Rocket League comes into its own.

DIRT RALLY

Your Mac might be a pristine, refined beauty of a computer, but it can be used to make a big ol’ digital mess in Dirt Rally. Codemasters’ series has typically delivered its rally racing with an arcade edge in recent years, but Dirt Rally skids back into serious simulation territory. It delivers intense, authentic racing action across six huge rallies with 70+ stages, letting you command more than 40 realistic rally cars from across the years.

GRIM FANDANGO REMASTERED

Another masterful reworking of a 90s classic, Grim Fandango hits MacOS with new, hi-res textures, dynamic lighting and a live orchestral score, bringing Tim Schafer’s sensational styling into the next-gen era. Following the story of Manny Calavera, employee of the Department of Death and travel agent to the dead, Fandango’s macabre, film noir-feel made it an instant classic, which translates magically to Mac.

HITMAN

IO Interactive’s stealth assassin series lost a bit of steam over time, but with a new episodic format, the revived Hitman feels totally fresh and is an essential play for action fans. Each episode of the now-complete first season offers up an entirely new sandbox environment full of missions, bonus objectives, and unique opportunities to plot your attack, and the entire package is a devious delight.

THIS WAR OF MINE

This War of Mine took the gaming world by storm when it was released, and for good reason: playing as a group of civilians attempting to make it through each day in a beseiged, war-torn city, TWoM attempts to provide a real experience of war, from a previously-untold angle. With a pace set by the day and night cycle, This War engrosses you in the horrible reality of war: every decision made will have unforgiving emotional impacts, as you struggle for shelter and survival from snipers and starvation.

KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM

Despite its quirky graphics and the Minion-esque mannerisms of the Kerbals, KSP is deceptively hard. It requires an actual working knowledge of the physics behind getting a rocket into space: think thrust, payload delivery, stability, orbital paths and other impressive-sounding words. If astronautical engineering isn’t really your bag, you needn’t worry – most of the fun in KSP is to be had with designing ludicrous vessels just to see how far you can get. There’s also a morass of mods available on the web.

MINECRAFT

If you don’t already have this block-building sensation on your phone, tablet, or game console, then you ought to get it for Mac. Minecraft is like the digital equivalent of Lego bricks, letting you build whatever you please using an array of small, pixelated blocks. You can play in a freeform creative mode, deal with monstrous threats in a survival experience, hop online to play with pals, or install mods for endless other variations. It’s perfect for all ages, really.

SID MEIER’S CIVILIZATION VI

Players have been obsessing over Civilization for decades now, and with Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, Firaxis has both expanded the game and made it easier to understand. Civilization VI is built off the back of previous entries, certainly, but this turn-based strategy experience brings in active research and improves diplomacy options, while cities can now be built around natural terrain thanks to a new multi-tile approach.

LEGO STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

Lego games are known for their mindless, smile-inducing fun, and what better pairing for that formula than Star Wars? It’s worked multiple times over the years, and while we don’t yet have a Last Jedi iteration, Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens is still plenty compelling. It’s all about blasting and smashing brick-based enemies and locations as you play through the movie’s storyline, complete with goofy cut-scenes that poke fun at the familiar tale.

TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA

If the words “Planescape: Torment” have any strong meaning to you, then you’ll definitely want to download Torment: Tides of Numenera as soon as possible. Even if they don’t, this isometric role-player is one of the best recent examples of the once-vibrant genre. Torment is heavy on storytelling and delivers a deeply compelling world to explore, with about 40 hours of epic questing to enjoy from the core adventure.

DOOR KICKERS

Fancy yourself as a SWAT team superman? Well, Door Kickers lets you channel your inner Bad Boys and jump straight into the action with its top-down shoot-fest. Giving new meaning to the term keyboard warrior, DK gives Mac military masterminds the task of balancing strategy and tactical decision making as they command a team of hostage-savers through volatile, 2D environments.

MIDDLE EARTH: SHADOW OF MORDOR – GAME OF THE YEAR EDITION

“No, I wouldn’t like to own the definitive version of a game (including heaps of DLC) which won more than 50 awards.” Oh. Well, we were going to suggest Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, but you probably won’t like it, then.

HOTLINE MIAMI 2: WRONG NUMBER

Hotline’s second coming is just as much a frantic, ultraviolent top-down 8-bit role-player as its first iteration. Wrong Number gives you the chance to control 13 different psychopathic shooters each with unique skill sets, offering brutal combat opportunities as the game’s unique, retro visual style and immersive narrative experience pull you fully in.

BESIEGE

Fulfil your inner engineer with Besiege: construct medieval siege contraptions to lay waste to countless conurbations, with a building system simple enough for slaughterers-in-training, whilst sufficiently complex to fulfil the cravings of infinitely creative conquerers. Concentrate your cranium with hatchet-job science to create clever catapults, monster manglers and terrific trebuchets, with all the resulting destruction rendered in glorious 3D.

XCOM 2

Blending classical strategic planning, tactics and development with gripping combat interactions – all in visually rich detail – XCOM is one strategy game that won’t leave you bored. Throw in new enemies and an immersive story and XCOM 2 is destined to steal hours, if not days, of your life. Better yet, there’s a whole community behind XCOM 2 developing mods that make it even better.

FARMING SIMULATOR 17

The title says it all, really – but don’t go thinking this is just some crop-cutting bore-fest. See, the FS series has captured the imagination of the internet, which means there’s a whole host of mods out there – as well as a barrage of YouTube videos – which make it a real sack of laughs. Head into FS 17’s online multiplayer mode and you can expect carnage, as combine harvesters, tractors and the rest wreak havoc in fields of sunflowers, soy beans and more.

HALF-LIFE 2

Yes, it was originally released in 2004 – but that doesn’t stop Half-Life 2 being an all-time great adventurer, and that remains very much the case on this Mac port. Playing as scientist-turned-saviour-of-humanity Gordon Freeman, it’s all on you to fend off the aliens infesting the planet. Deploy your wits and weapons – including the immense gravity gun – to free humanity, while enjoying the award-winning physics, graphics and human emotions which made Half-Life 2 such a success.

MOTORSPORT MANAGER

Reckon you’re the next Briatore? Think you could trump EJ? Put your mettle to the test with Motorsport Manager – probably the best racing management simulator that’s ever been made. Originally a beautifully realised smartphone game, it’s also available for Mac – among other platforms – with greater depth, richer graphics and generally more addictive gameplay.

COUNTER-STRIKE: GLOBAL OFFENSIVE

Decent multiplayer shooters are few and far between on the Mac. Thankfully, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is all the gun-toting you’ll ever need. A steep learning curve only adds to the addictiveness, as you utilise a range of unlockable weapons to fight insurgents as a counter-terrorist – or vice versa – battling across 7 maps where death is always right around the corner.

STARCRAFT II

StarCraft II is several years old at this point, but it remains a real-time strategy classic. And there’s fresh reason to play it right now, especially if you haven’t before: Blizzard recently made the original Wings of Liberty campaign and the core online multiplayer experience free.

RUST

Originally launched in 2013, Rust was subsequently rebooted for Mac – and, while that didn’t go entirely to plan, it’s still a cruel, immersive survival game that will test your patience. It’s multiplayer-only and, really, you need to play in a group. Play alone and all of your hard work – building shelter, finding food, crafting some semblance of a life for yourself – will almost definitely be raided and decimated by a bigger group of players.