Adventures in Mac Gaming, Vol. 3

I have moved over to the Ghost platform - Substack platforming many of society's waste products is certainly a choice and they're free to do so, but I think I'll pass on the association. Anyhoo, don't worry, I haven't, uh, ghosted people after my last piece over there - in fact all my work has been moved over here to peruse - I've just been figuring out where I wanted to start over. It's not like I had many subscribers or anything, so starting from scratch is no biggie! But if you want to start doing so here, that's cool with me. I will still keep it free as this is just an avenue to be creative and talk about stuff that interests me.

Moving on!

Today's grouping of paragraphs returns us to the world of Mac gaming, a frustrating hive of 32-bit inoperability and the kind of third-party software malaise that die-hard Nintendo fans circa 2010 would feel sorry for. Our third entry in this series takes us to a Mac App Store exclusive release, the recent remake of the GameCube classic Resident Evil 4. Following the success of the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes, getting to RE4 seemed like it was a no-brainer, and honestly I'm surprised they haven't done the same with Resident Evil 5 yet. Guess they want to avoid teaching the controversy surrounding that game.

The Mac version retails for $60, which is fun when Steam sells the Windows version for $40, and since Capcom is keeping these App Store exclusive, you can't buy it on there. On the bright side, you can download the full game and at least try it out, up until the mass insanity that is the first village, then it asks you to pay. Also, it's playable on iPhones and iPads that can handle it, and one purchase covers all the platforms. I had no intention of buying it at full price, but everyone was nice enough to put it on sale for $20 which is a much better deal. You still have to pay for the DLC but the only one worth even thinking about is the Separate Ways side-story, so really, no big deal there.

Unlike some other games that have released exclusively to the Mac's App Store, Capcom has been aggressive at providing the games with features that make it user-friendly, especially if you're playing across multiple platforms and want to carry saves over. It comes with optimization for Apple Silicon machines, GameCenter support with achievements, and it has cross-save capability with iCloud upload/download. These should be standard features on any game released via the App Store, but alas I'm not in charge of Apple's gaming division.

Yet.

Yeah, right. I'm off my meds again. I'm not on any meds, I'm just crazy.

Sigh. Back to the matter at hand. Resident Evil 4 does have one change that is really annoying with regards to iCloud saves. The other Mac RE games that I have played - 2, 3, and Village - automatically upload a save to the cloud so I can download it on another machine and pick up. Resident Evil 4... does not. You have to go into the settings and manually upload / download saves. Why? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It also caused me some nightmares last week when I decided to upgrade my Macs to run the macOS Tahoe beta - all my saves for App Store purchased games disappeared, including RE4 I hadn't gotten super far, but I had to start from scratch because it never uploaded my save.

So that was nice. I am once again asking for universal cloud saves on anything released via App Store. You wanna be the Steam of the Mac, this is Step 1.

I have a PS5 copy of this game, but it has never been played mostly because playing video games on the TV is a magnet for small children and small children probably don't need to be scarred by things on the screen such as, well, look up at that screenshot. So this is my first time going through RE4 since I ran through it on PS2 with the gangster outfit and the infinite machine-gun unlockable. It's funny though, when I replayed Resident Evil 2 I remembered all the nooks and crannies of the PS1 game because I played through it 5 million times, so it was a treat to see what they changed. RE4, I can vaguely recall most of the details aside from the plot and other broad details, so it's hard for me to tell just how much has changed. The one thing I did notice was the moved the whole "dog stuck in a bear trap" to later, which was interesting.

The important thing is that it looks and plays great. I mostly run it on my new and trusty M4 Mac Mini, but I gave it a run on my 2021 M1 iMac and it runs really nicely there as well. I did keep the resolution around 1080p but was mostly done to assure stability and playability. On my Mac Mini I have it topped out, though again I'm limited to 1080p thanks to my monitor. I'm sure once I get my 4K replacement it'll be capable of those resolutions without issue. This was a PS4 game, as you know. The full-3D overhaul compared to the now-outdated controls of the original game adds the modern flair of the other remakes, but still feels like Resident Evil 4 should. Plus, of course, our favorite merchant is still around to sell stuff, stranger.

As always this is not a review of the game - it's old and who wants to read yet another one - but more of an overview of what it's like to play this on a Macintosh computer. In short, even if you have the oldest of the Apple Silicon hardware, you can have a good time with Resident Evil 4, long as you keep modest settings. It will still look great but be advised that running it beyond 1080p will be challenging. I still think Resident Evil 2 is the best of the remakes due to how massive the overhaul is compared to the original, but RE4 still is a worthy replay, especially if you leap on it as a Mac user when it's on sale. It still is now, but may not be for long, or when you read this, but Resident Evil 4 is a great demonstration of how good it could be on Apple Silicon hardware. Just remember to upload your saves!