“War, huh, what is it good for?” – Edwin Star, War from the album War and Peace

Well… apparently, it’s good for good times. War games are all over the map. So, to honor our ever-present source of joy and soul-crushing doom, Mac Gamer HQ presents you with a four-star general overview of the best war games for Mac.

1992, the year Spectre was released on DOS, as well as Mac. Made by Peninsula Gameworks and published by Velocity Inc., this action, racing / driving and strategy game.

As always, we’re going for different styles and genres, as well as different price points and system requirements. We aim to help you discover great new games and perhaps one of these will be perfect for you:

Want even more good games for Mac? These are the 100 Top Mac games you can play today.

No round-up of the best Mac war games for Mac would be complete without touching on the big franchises that have left their mark on Mac gaming, so I’ll start with two of the major ones. These are perfect for those of you who enjoy crushing your enemies under the heel of your polished and well-kept boots.

The condition of man… is a condition of war of everyone against everyone – Thomas Hobbes

War is all-encompassing and to give you the taste of blood you crave, the Total War series relies on a dual-engine approach. First, there’s a real-time war theater which allows you to command your troops’ every move on the battlefield. It lets you deploy your soldiers, define your engagement strategy, groupings, pace, and more. In between battles, there’s a turn-based strategy interface (think a very stripped down version of Sid Meier’s Civilization series) that lets you construct the whole of your war machine. Different games in the Total War franchise take you from before the birth of Christ to the end of the Napoleonic period and all over the globe.

MacGamer HQ’s head-honcho Ric is a fan of the franchise’s take on feudal japan, Total War: Shogun 2, but I’m definitely fond of the most recent release, Total War: Attila. Attila takes you to the end of the western Roman empire and puts you in control of one of the Mediterranean or Germanic tribes that carved up former Roman territory, and their enemy’s hides in the process. The game features a skirmish mode, historical battles mode (which lets you relive some epic battlefield confrontations of the period) and a campaign mode. Campaign mode features a dynasty interface that allows you to play the court game of intrigue if you’re the type that likes your war in intimate settings. You can purchase additional campaigns and culture packs if your favorite war-mongering pack of blood-thirsty maniacs isn’t in the base game.

The Wargame series, from Eugen Systems, is a real-time strategy (RTS) wargame that gives you control of Cold War Era militaries across the globe. One of the biggest selling points is Eugen’s effort to bring you as close to the real battlefield as possible, accurately reproducing hundreds of military vehicles, troops, and weapons. The campaign modes have grown with each release and the multiplayer modes are worth hundreds of hours of replay value. A unique aspect of the game is the satellite camera mode which, on its own, is little more than a cool video effect but, in reality, demonstrates the scale of the game’s battlefields.

Wargame: European Escalation, gives the player the chance to control one of the Cold War militaries in Thatcher-era Europe. The game’s sequel, Wargame: Airland Battle, takes you right back to the battlefield in a conflict between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces. But if you had to buy just one, the series’ latest, Wargame: Red Dragon, brings you near the end of the Cold War and adds a variety of the Asian communist states, expanding the theater of war to a truly global scale.

The RTS genre is dominated by war games, but the variety of styles still leaves Mac players with plenty of options for demolishing their foes.

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time – Leo Tolstoy

Another Mac Gamer HQ favorite, Company of Heroes 2 is the sequel to the original Company of Heroes, released over a decade ago. The sequel takes you directly onto the Eastern Front of WWII for a close-up look at the vagaries of the war you’re waging. The Essence 3.0 engine provides a beautifully rendered war theater that utilizes a variety of in-game systems to enhance the realism of the battlefield and encourage victory by skill rather than firepower. The destructible environments never cease to amaze me and the many ways the enemy can be countered with the right units is equally impressive.

The three released DLC packs introduce more armies for single and multiplayer modes (including action on the Western Front), each of which carries their own strengths and flaws. You can pick up the CoH2: Master Collection for a tidy $39.99 and choose how you want to win and on which map to reign supreme.

Paradox Interactive is well known for its grand-strategy simulations. Each of their titles features an adjustable real-time clock allowing you to watch your decisions play out in a matter of minutes or extending the results of your strategic decisions to hours and days. Their games can bring you from the start of the crusades through the end of the WWII; the company’s most recent offering, Stellaris, will even take you hundreds of years into the future for galaxy-wide statecraft. Each game has it’s own idiosyncrasies and loyalists, but they’ll all give you your fix if grand strategy is your thing.

Hearts of Iron 4 is the company’s most war-oriented, giving you god-like command over pretty much any country that existed in the WWII period. An almost ridiculously complex technology system lets you guide your country’s development as you like, while diplomacy systems let you conduct trade, form and break alliances and treaties, and appoint advisors to help you turn the world from a divided battleground into one of your making. The military system provides you with the chance to specialize your battalions. Pause the game, set your plans, bump up the game-clock speed, and unpause and you can watch your grand vision bring the war to a close on your terms, or bring your country to ruin.

It would be hard to find a gamer in the world that isn’t at least aware of Blizzard’s Starcraft 2. The game extends a nearly decade and a half’s long campaign of real-time space war with an RTS system that serves as a cross between the resource acquisition of traditional 4x turn-based strategy games such as the Civilization series and the RTS battlefield play of the Total War series.

Starcraft 2 gives you control over one of three races, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, to craft a mobile war machine from, almost literally, the ground up. Nearly every aspect of your fighting force, from securing resources to front-line battle commands, is under your control and while the battlefield is yours for the taking, it’s also everyone else’s.
While Blizzard controversially released each race’s story as its own game, as opposed to the original which had all three in one package, Wings of Liberty, Legacy of the Void and Heart of the Swarm can now all be bought and played separately. With a variety of playable races, Starcraft 2 can easily satisfy any urge to dominate your fellow man … or alien.

War games in the turn-based tactical strategy genre have been relatively dry as of late, but there are some definite gems if you keep your eyes open. The two below are some of the better known.

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I was brainstorming today on how to more efficiently control smurfing, hacking, and other unwary aspects of online gaming. Mainlining review.

XCOM 2 follows the events of the first XCOM release of the new era, placing you in command of an XCOM team living on the run in a world controlled by the alien forces. The open-ended campaign mode lets you pick and choose what to do, and where and when to do it as you regain control of Earth.

The tactical combat system provides turn-by-turn control over 5 classes of warriors that you can tailor to your own strategy. The technology system of the previous game remains, in expanded form, giving you control over how you’ll exterminate your alien overlords. A greater cast of friends, foes, NPC’s, and increased diversity in weapons and gear complete the game’s customization options, giving you total control over your forces in both the campaign and multiplayer mode. With XCOM 2, you are humanity’s last stand, again, after the first last stand against alien invasion forces failed.

Easily one of the most highly regarded series’ on Mac, The Banner Saga takes you into a fantasy Viking world for an RPG epic story. A turn-based tactical battle system gives you control of 25 customizable characters, each of 2 different races and 7 different classes, in both the campaign story mode and multiplayer skirmish modes. The narrative is an important aspect of this series and each of your choices over the course of the game affects the rest of your experience in an open-ended story-mode that requires strategic decisions on the battlefield but also outside.

The 2-D graphics call to mind the old-school style of Dragon’s Lair with beautifully animated battlefields and story animations. The campaign mode is currently 2 games deep, with a third episode in development, and since decisions made in the first game carry over to the second, I recommend you start with part one and play through the second.

No look at the top war games would be complete without a look at the First Person Shooters (FPS) that put you right onto the front lines in the muck and the mire of warfare. The three discussed here are just a sample of the FPS war games available for Mac gamers.

I’m better when it’s breathing. – Chris, American Sniper

In truth, it’s hard to find anything to say about the Call of Duty series. After all, who isn’t familiar with Call of Duty’s trademark fast gameplay and shoot everything that moves style. But of all the versions available for Mac gamers, Modern Warfare 3 is the one Mac Gamer HQ head honcho Ric recommends. MW3 is on Steam, features cross-platform multiplayer, a spec ops co-op mode and survival modes. Call of Duty games all have fun campaigns with production values worthy of a Michael Bay film. Yet Multiplayer is where they all shine and MW 3’s cross-platform multiplayer makes it the best Mac alternative.

The entire MW series (CoD4MW+MW2+MW3) is also available on Steam in one bundle that puts all of Modern Warfare in your hands, along with DLC, for a reasonably tidy sum. There’s really not a lot to say about it. It’s Call of Duty, but on Mac hardware. Just aim, run, and shoot people in the face.

Arma 3 puts you in control of a variety of battlefield soldiers and mechanical vehicles of destruction. The single-player story mode puts you in the boots of Ben Kerry for a 3 episode campaign. Single player training and scenarios help you beef up your battle-chops before you enter the sandbox multiplayer mode featuring both official and unofficial community-made maps and scenarios. Unique to the Arma 3 multiplayer mode is the Zeus mode, which gives players god-like influence over other players and the contingencies of the battlefield. A content editor also gives you the chance to design your own maps and scenarios for both the community and yourself. The Mac version of the game is currently in

The Mac version of the game is currently in experimental beta mode so you might want to hold off on buying the game until it receives official support. Then again, if you really can’t wait, you can buy the Windows version and then hype your friends on the Mac beta to help the process along.

A personal favorite of Ric’s and mine, this 3rd-person shooter from Yager Development studios takes you into the darker psychological recesses of war. Taking control of Special Operations Force’s Captain Martin Walker, you lead his three-person team through a single-player campaign in post-apocalyptic Dubai in search of mysterious Colonel John Konrad. I won’t spoil the story for you, but let me just say that it’s different and unique. Call of Duty and Battlefield should both take notice.

The gameplay is good too, featuring some exploration but mostly taking cover and shooting (similar to Gears of Wars games). You’ll find yourself short of ammo, time, and patience often enough that you might end up needing a new controller in this game that, for myself, calls to mind the 1999 film Fight Club, but instead of not being about war, it’s about war. Post-script spoiler alert.

This final entry comes from 11-bit studios and is easily one of the most intriguingly heartfelt approaches to the war genre in gaming history.

Our nation exists because of the people! We exist because of them. – Cidolfas Orlandu, Final Fantasy Tactics

Another personal favorite of Ric’s and mine, this scavenger-hunt game is about choices when choices are too few. Putting you in control of three civilians trapped in a building in a war-torn town, your goal is to keep these people alive amidst sniper fire that keeps you inside during the day, and among thieves and other civilians just trying to survive at night.

Only the dead have seen the end of war – attribution questionable

Resource management, scavenging missions, and housekeeping are central to the survival of your group. Decisions on how your players behave toward remaining survivors affect the morale and health of your characters in the randomly generated world brought to life in a beautifully animated tale of survival and loss in a devastated world.

This is far from an all-encompassing list, but any of these games should provide hours of good times. MacOS war games come in all shades, styles, and sizes and there’s no end in sight to the destruction you’ll reap upon your adversaries. That being said, keep count of your ammo, your eyes on your scopes, and your wits about you and don’t forget to be at least reasonably respectful to your fellow gamers. As Einstein was fond of saying: Say what you want about me and how I play the game, you’ve at least gotta admit that I’m the guy with the rocket launcher.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. – Albert Einstein

Disclaimer: Some of the links above are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission (this is how we pay the bills). This commission comes at no additional cost to you.

Please understand that I only mention games because I believe they’re interesting, good, and/or fun. Never because I received a free copy or to earn a small commission.

This article comes from Thomas Trono.

Before digital downloads, finding the best Mac games wasn’t always easy.

They were out there, but the Mac section of the computer game stores (they used to have those) seemed to stock nothing but “Mario Teaches Typing,” and the games that included Mac and Windows versions would inevitably be scattered around the “PC” sections of the store.

As such, compiling a list of the best classic Mac games is pretty tough.

That didn’t stop us from doing it. And because we want you to actually play these games, we made sure you can still buy them all in either their original form or as enhanced editions (not remakes). It also means some of our favorite old Mac games—such as Myth, Red Baron, and Fallout—didn’t make the list.

By the way, if you want to stay on top of all the latest Mac games updates, retro or modern, make sure you check out Pure Mac.

The 10 Best old games for Mac: Revisiting the classics

When this turn-based fantasy RPG from Spiderweb Software arrived in 2000 it already looked and played like throwbacks to RPGs of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. But it did so in the best ways possible.

Avernum is an underground prison, and of course, your adventure begins when you’re exiled there from the surface world, known as the Empire. But Avernum isn’t simply a prison; an entire culture exists in this subterranean world, presenting you with myriad options on what to do next. With numerous quests, spells, and party members to customize and control, Avernum unfolds with the freedom of pencil and paper adventures.

Avernum: The Complete Saga gives you a ridiculous amount of content and a cohesive story arc that’s tremendously satisfying. The graphics are rudimentary, but Avernum is very satisfying if you can overlook that.

Another name synonymous with Mac gaming back in the ‘90s was Ambrosia Software. You simply didn’t know a Mac user who didn’t have at least one Ambrosia game on her PowerPC.

Perhaps their most fondly remembered title is EV Nova, the third game in the Escape Velocity series. A space exploration and combat game, EV Nova is set amongst warring factions scattered throughout the Milky Way. Consider it Divergent amongst the stars, as you will select your faction then find your role in it.

Gameplay involves jumping between star systems to accept and execute missions, upgrade your ship, and wreck havoc. There are six major storylines and plenty of branching missions, and how you get involved is up to you. That leads to plenty of replay options.

It’s still easy to get overwhelmed by EV Nova despite its age, but Ambrosia offers plenty of resources at the company’s website.

Our second sci-fi first-person shooter to make the list finds you waking from cryostasis to a ship full of unknown aliens, a screwed up AI, and your now zombified companions. Fair enough. We’ve been through this before, so pick up the weapons and health packs and have at it, right?

Wrong. System Shock 2 doesn’t give you a lot of weapons or health packs. Rather, it gives you an RPG-like system of upgrades that forces you to use strategy, stealth, and the environment to survive.

What really separates System Shock 2 from its peers is the ship itself. It’s creepy and oppressive, and you’ll be more afraid of what could be around the corner than what actually is. Story elements are revealed through logs left by the crew, limiting your knowledge of what’s going on in a manner that reinforces how alone you are.

Another game produced by Peter Molyneux, Syndicate Plus is a real-time tactical action game in which you lead a team of cyborg mercenaries in the “problem-solving” department of the Syndicate.

When you hear the term “cyborg” you just know there are going to be plenty of customization options via augmentations. You will use these to create a team that moves through futuristic locations to achieve your employer’s objectives.

Although there’s plenty to address between missions, it’s the execution of those missions that is most fun. The citizens and their belongings (cars, for example) are there to suit your purposes, should you need them. Your radar tells you where you need to go, but the direct route isn’t always best. If you need some extra help you can “persuade” the people around to help get the job done.

Best of all, the music and sound effects were incredibly effective for the time. The music that suddenly kicks in when you’re spotted will follow me for the rest of my life.

I gave up on the Star Wars movies about 25 minutes into Return of the Jedi, and I’ve never been able to get back into it. I still quite enjoy the games, however, and my all time favorite is 1994’s TIE Fighter from LucasArts.

This is because of the excellent story that drives the mission-based flight-sim combat, because of the smooth graphics, and because it was the first time I got to serve the Empire. The missions are what you’d expect from any competent flight sim, asking you to engage in dogfights, take down freighters, protect your own vessels, etc. But because you’re now facing off against the whiney Rebellion, there’s a certain evil glee that goes along with it.

I’m also impressed by TIE Fighter’s staying-power. The gameplay is every bit as intense (and difficult) as it was in the mid-90s, and the space combat graphics are still very cool to view. Just make sure you play it with a joystick. Trust me on this.

There was a time when Bungie Studios was the shining light of Mac gaming. With Mac-only (or at least Mac-first) games such as Myth and Oni, they were the one company that made Windows owners jealous of Mac gamers.

But then Microsoft bought them to claim Halo, and that shining light was snuffed out forever.

Mac gamers can still see what made Bungie so special by playing the Marathon Trilogy. This revolutionary series of sci-fi themed first-person shooters introduced features such as real-time voice chat and the ability to wield two weapons at once. The multiplayer options may not do you much good today, but the action and the story are every bit as entertaining as they were in the ’90s.

Honestly, Marathon would be higher on this list were it not for the steps required to grab it. The games are free, but you’ll need to install Aleph One (the free, open source continuation of Bungie’s Marathon 2 FPS game engine) to run them.

“But what if this was set in space?” is a valid question for every video game ever made…even games that are already set in space. That’s because space makes everything so much bigger and more imaginative. And the time this worked best was when Sid Meier took Civilization interstellar with Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.

The turn-based strategy elements all remained. You choose from seven factions, then research an unexplored planet, build new technologies and customize your units, and conquer anything hostile (or friendly, if that suits you) to claim victory.

The fun thing about Alpha Centauri is that none of the factions are bad guys. No matter which you select, you feel like you’re doing the right thing when you conquer the others.

Still, why bother playing this when there are many modern alternatives available on the Mac? Because the only thing missing in Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri are the flashy graphics. The writing, voice-acting, and depth of gameplay options are still among the best the genre has ever seen.

Tank Trouble

For our next game, we go all the way back to the ’80s with Bullfrog’s Populous from Peter Molyneux. If it’s not the first “god” game out there, it’s the first that made god gaming so gleefully fun.

In Populous, you’re given an isometric view of your world and tasked with manipulating this world to help your “followers” wipe out the enemy. More followers lead to more mana, more mana leads to more powers, and more powers mean earthquakes, volcanos, and all kinds of fun ways to punish the non-believers.

There are many similar games available now, most of which are much more involved and rewarding. So, why bother going back to 1989 for the original Populous? Because it’s still fun. It also contains a whopping 500 levels, and the rudimentary graphics create an odd connection with your followers. It’s more like developer and programs than God and subjects.

Those looking to relive the original adventure in this real-time fantasy RPG are in for a treat. The enhanced edition—released in April of this year—comes with the original version from 1999.

No matter which version you’ll play, you are the Nameless One. A name like that means life isn’t good, and the horrors of lives you can’t remember are coming back to haunt you. Worse, a floating skull named Morte is leading your adventure that will take you to the very depths of Hell.

The characters you can recruit in Planescape: Torment are highly non-traditional, including a crossbow-wielding cube and a haunted suit of armor. You’re free to change your class and alignment throughout the 50+ hour adventure, so you’re not stuck with one way of thinking as with most RPGs of this time.

Here’s a case where the enhanced edition of a game expertly accomplishes its goal; it reminds fans of why they loved the original while making the game accessible to modern gamers.

Why? To start, the remastered graphics lovingly reflect the look of the original, serving mainly to make them look sharp on today’s much larger monitors. The enhanced edition also adds four new characters you can simply ignore if you want to remain faithful to the original, and it builds Shadows of Amn and Throne of Baal right into the package. There’s now a multiplayer option, too.

The reason Baldur’s Gate II is so fondly remembered is because of the excellent story and well-balanced combat. As you’d expect from a Forgotten Realms-based game, you can play through as the good guy, the bad guy, or someone in between. Your actions affect how NPCs and members of your own party see you and will open and close quests and other options.

Good RPGs create worlds you don’t just want to play through, but live in. And in that regard, Baldur’s Gate II is one of the most successful of all time.

The thing about putting together a list of the best classic Mac games is that it’s constantly changing. More games become “classic” each year, but it’s more than that. Countless games bubble just under the surface, waiting to be rediscovered or to get their “enhanced” edition to lift them back into the consciousness of Mac gamers. And with the ease of digital distribution, don’t be surprised if we’re soon talking about more of our favorites.

Mac Tank Game

In the meantime, can someone remind me why the Mac versions of Fallout and Fallout 2 disappeared again?

Disclaimer: Some of the links above are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission (this is how we pay the bills). This commission comes at no additional cost to you.

Please understand that I only mention games because I believe they’re interesting, good, and/or fun. Never because I received a free copy or to earn a small commission.

Mac game publisher Aspyr Media has announced the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 for the Macintosh. It's one of the first games to ship for Mac OS X, as well. It's one of the first games to. Tony hawk video.