Yesterday, we reported that Half-Life 2 had been confirmed for a Mac arrival. Well, with today’s weekly Wednesday Steam update, we saw that release.
I’ve been playing it almost nonstop since it was put up. Half-Life 2, HL2 Episode 1, and HL2 Episode 2 are all available for download on Mac OS X. It runs smooth as ever, and even has a few other improvements…
There is now cloud saving, allowing you to play on a Windows machine, save, and then pick up where you left off on your Mac. Or however you want to use it, like if you’re formatting your computer. Your save will be safe. This is something I’d been hoping for, and I’m really happy that they’ve taken the initiative to include it.
Another change is small graphical updates. I haven’t really noticed them, but then again, I haven’t played Half-Life 2 in a year or so.
And the final change is achievements, giving you another reason to run through again. (Does this help you justify it to yourself? As if you needed to.) There are 33 achievements available in Half-Life 2, 13 in Episode 1, and 22 in Episode 2.
On top of all of that, Valve has also pushed out a Mac-exclusive HL2 and Portal update, just a bit ago. For HL2, it fixes some font issues the game was having and also a crash that was occurring.
Portal’s update brings about better performance with the particle rendering on lower-end GPU’s and “made acid pits more performant.” All of these updates have come out for Mac, and seeing how HL2 was just released for the platform today, it makes me feel as if Valve is really sticking by its oath to make Mac OS X a tier-one gaming platform. They’re already showing the community great attention and fixing bugs as they come. Mad respect, Valve.
This was an incredibly exciting release for me.. Half-Life 2 is one of my favourite games of all time, and I’m happy to be able to replay it in my preferred operating system. This also gives me hope for next week’s update.
I’m really hoping that they finally budge and release Team Fortress 2. TF2 is a fantastic online first-person shooter that I would absolutely love to play. (Can’t play it on my Windows partition unfortunately, because of some wifi issues that prevent me from having a constant connection.) Or even Counter-Strike: Source. In fact, I think I would prefer that, just for the nostalgia. Either way, I hope next week is a great update, and not like last week’s uneventful Valve-less update.
Also, if you haven’t purchased The Orange Box yet, do that now. If you’re a Mac gamer, four out of the five games are now available, waiting only on Team Fortress 2. It’s the best deal in all of gaming, and I recommend it more than just about anything else.
Related posts:
- Half life 2 for Mac Steam!
- Almost All Valve Games Now On Mac
- Steam for Mac Released – First Impressions
- Team Fortress 2 Hitting Mac Tomorrow
- Starcraft 2 Released To Mac User Animosity
9 Responses
nice thumbnail picture.
Posted on May 26th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Might be released, but I can’t get it to work. I’ve got a multi monitor set up(don’t know if that is essential knowledge, but anyway). The thing boots up, shows the picture of the square with folks ambling about (title screen I think), but it doesn’t respond to any of my clicks, key presses. Seems like it can’t get focus (though it seem to respond to esc to quit loading titles). Tried running windowed mode (-sw) but same results. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Posted on May 27th, 2010 at 4:17 am
You know the patch they released to fix text not showing up on Macs? That *stopped* my text from showing up. And the game won’t run fullscreen. The dock and menu bar are still visible.
Posted on May 27th, 2010 at 9:07 am
That’s odd = First I’ve heard of that bug
Posted on May 27th, 2010 at 11:30 am
Portal ran fine for me ever since it was released. As soon as this patch hits, no more menus.
Posted on May 27th, 2010 at 11:49 am
Indeed, since the update, my problems started occurring
Posted on May 27th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Wow. That’s weird as hell. You should post on the Steam forums to bring that to their attention.
Posted on May 27th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Try adding +mat_antialias 0 to the launch options(right click the game, properties, then set launch options). Worked for me.
Posted on May 28th, 2010 at 8:07 am
Apparently, Valve patched it while I was at work. It’s working again. Now that I finally own Episode 2, I think I might play these games.
Posted on May 28th, 2010 at 8:58 am
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