FPS games for M1 Mac?

September 3, 2022 8:21 AM

I’m not going to buy a new PC / console but I do like to play the odd singleplayer FPS when the mood takes me. However, I only own a new M1 Mac. Are there any games of this type available? It’s hard to search Steam / GoG stores because they don’t let you combine specific filters as far as I can tell; and because lots of games won’t run on 64-bit Macs (often not clear from the system reqs)
posted by chappell, ambrose to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (6 answers total)

Probably not about 32 vs 64 bit; but rather x86 vs ARM (aka Apple Silicon). Warnings about 32 vs 64 bit probably have more to do with the OS version (which makes them also apply to M1 Macs by implication, you can’t dual boot Snow Leo or El Cap or whatever on Apple Silicon).

Others will hopefully have more to say about available single player FPS titles, not really my genre.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:59 AM on September 3, 2022

I'm currently running Borderlands 2 (from Steam store) and Borderlands 3 (from Epic store). They both run well on my 2017-era iMac. From the system requirements, I'm not seeing anything that excludes an M1 Mac.
posted by SPrintF at 10:11 AM on September 3, 2022

Steam preferences has a "platform preferences" section which lets you tell it to "only" show you MacOS-compatible games. I say "only" because there's a bunch of views and carousels throughout the store that don't obey this, BUT it definitely helps. I have that set and when I go to the FPS category everything in the tabbed lists (new & trending etc.) is MacOS compatible.

FPS isn't my genre usually but Prodeus is a Mac-compatible boomer shooter (Doom-style) that is super fun. It's in early access but is largely complete, at least to my satisfaction.
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:36 AM on September 3, 2022

Apple Silicon Games might be useful (almost all major games have to run through Rosetta, which is annoying but works well enough in some cases).
posted by malevolent at 12:32 PM on September 3, 2022

Bioshock Remastered from the Steam Library plays like a treat on my M1 Mac Mini. Boy, it'd be sweet it Valve bothered to update their source engine games to 64 bit compatibility, though. It's only been 3 years, y'all.

Honestly, the sort of mild annoyance with Valve is that the Steam Launcher is still x86 and all the Steam APIs are still x86, so I guess there's sort of a catch-22 for game devs who would want to upgrade to ARM native in Steam's storefront, since there's some library compatibility shenanigans that would end up with everything running through Rosetta anyway, I guess?
posted by Kyol at 3:23 PM on September 3, 2022

I'm running Borderlands 3 from Epic on my M1 Macbook Pro and it looks good enough. My computer certainly gets very hot, so I wouldn't really play this on my lap.
posted by MonsieurBon at 4:25 PM on September 3, 2022