Action Games

25. Batman: Arkham Asylum

Company: Feral Interactive
UK sales: The Mac App Store
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6.8, 1.8GHz Intel processor, graphics card with 128MB VRAM
Price: £27.99

It’s frustrating to see that the sequel, Arkham City, has already come out on the PC, but Arkham Asylum is still a must-have game. The lunatics have well and truly taken over the asylum, which means that Batman has to enter Arkham and fight his way past a series of his most deadly foes, including The Scarecrow and Bane, before finally confronting his arch-enemy, The Joker. The game provides a terrific combination of stealthy prowling and action, using a freeflow system that allows you to smoothly string together a variety of different combat moves. Throw in a bunch of cool Bat gadgets and a showstopping performance from Mark Hamill as The Joker, and you’ve got probably one of the best Mac games out there.

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26. Portal 2

Company: Valve
URL: store.steampowered.com
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5.7, Intel Core Duo, graphics card with 128MB VRAM
Price: £19.99

Portal came out of nowhere to dazzle gamers with its mind-bendingly fiendish puzzles back in 2007, and this sequel is even more challenging. You return to the Aperture Science Labs and find yourself once again trapped in a maze of interconnected rooms controlled by the murderous GLaDOS computer system. The basic formula remains the same, so you have to escape from the lab by using special weapons that create dimension-twisting portals – create a portal in the wall in front of you and you may find yourself stepping through into a room that’s actually behind you. There are, however, a number of new elements that make this sequel even more intriguing, such as a co-op mode that allows you to work alongside a friend, and a more developed story line that starts to explain how this situation actually got started.

27. Mafia II: The Director’s Cut

Company: Feral Interactive
UK sales: The Mac App Store
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6.8, 2.0GHz Intel processor, graphics card with 256MB VRAM
Price: £27.99

Set in America during the 1940s and 1950s, Mafia II casts you in the role of Vito Scaletta, a small-time crook who rises through the ranks to become head of a Mafia family. In order to prove that you’ve got what it takes you need to demonstrate skill as a strong-arm enforcer, get-away driver and marksman, which means that the game combines hand-to-hand combat, driving skills and action-packed shootouts. The game has an atmospheric soundtrack of original period music, and this Director’s Cut is good value for money as it includes both the original game and the three expansion packs that followed it. The action’s a bit grisly, though, so it’s not suitable for younger players.

28. Grand Theft Auto Trilogy

Company: Rockstar Games
UK sales: The Mac App Store
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5.8, Intel Core 2 Duo processor, graphics card with 256MB VRAM
Price: £10.49 each

After years of waiting, three GTA games have arrived on the Mac in one go – GTA III, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas. They are all seriously politically incorrect – you steal cars, drive like crazy, and slap people around in order to take control of whichever city the game happens to be set in. In many ways it’s those cities that are the real stars, as they provide you with huge, sprawling playgrounds where you can explore and do pretty much whatever you want. The boxed trilogy costs £35, but you can pick up each game individually for £10.49 on the Mac App Store.

29. Assassin’s Creed 2 Deluxe Edition

Company: Ubisoft
URL: store.steampowered.com
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5.8, Intel processor, graphics card with 256MB VRAM
Price: £14.99

The Assassin’s Creed games are a kind of medieval version of Batman. The second game in this popular series casts you as Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a nobleman in 15th century Italy, who turns assassin in order to avenge his murdered family. You get to sneak around in the shadows and swoop across the rooftops, cutting down your enemies with a variety of weapons and gadgets. Alternatively, you can use stealth skills to blend in with the crowd and evade pursuit. You can chase around on horseback or ride a gondola, and you even get to fly in a medieval helicopter designed by Leonardo Da Vinci. If you like this then there’s another game in the series, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, that’s also available on the Mac.

30. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Company: Aspyr
URL: www.aspyr.com
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5.8, Intel processor, graphics card with 256MB VRAM
Price: £14.99

The Mac has fallen behind with the latest entries in the Call Of Duty series, but Modern Warfare is still one of the top-selling games on the Mac App Store (although you can save yourself a few quid by buying the game directly from Aspyr’s own GameAgent store instead). As the name implies, Modern Warfare comes forward in time from the WWII setting of the earlier games and pits you against a modern terrorist threat. The 3D graphics are gritty and realistic, and the single-player game takes you to locations all around the world, fighting on the ground and in the air using helicopters and armed gunships. There’s also a popular multiplayer mode to keep you playing time and again.

Casual Games

31. The Sims Medieval

Company: Electronic Arts
URL: www.ea.com/uk/mac
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5.8, Intel processor, graphics card with 256MB VRAM
Price: £14.99

The Sims Medieval is an unusual addition to the popular series. The game takes the familiar Sims formula, but plonks it down into a setting full of kings, queens and scheming nobles, all plotting to outdo each other. There are elements of both strategy and RPG games thrown in too. You can create a variety of characters, such as merchants, priests, wizards and knights, and expand your kingdom by building new churches, castles and towers. There’s also a Pirates and Nobles expansion pack available that adds a dash of swashbuckling action to the mix.

32. Lego Star Wars – The Complete Saga

Company: Feral Interactive
UK sales: The Mac App Store
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5.8, 1.5GHz Intel processor,  graphics card with 128MB VRAM
Price: £20.99

No home should be without at least one Lego game, and if you pick up The Complete Saga you get the six games based on the Star Wars films for just £21. The sheer fun of playing with the Lego versions of Luke, Han, Yoda and Darth Vader will appeal to both adults and children. The six games in this pack offer a variety of different scenarios, including space battles, lightsaber duels, and the famous battle on the ice planet of Hoth. If you’re a Star Wars fan, Feral has also released a new Lego game based on the Clone Wars cartoon series, and there are other Lego games based on the Batman, Harry Potter and Indiana Jones films as well.

33. The Secret Of Monkey Island – Special Edition

Company: Aspyr
UK sales: The Mac App Store
System Requirements: Mac with OS X 10.5.4, 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor, ATI X1600 or Nvidia 7300 or later with 128MB VRAM.
Price: £6.99

This year’s Special Edition is an update of the original classic Monkey Island. It tells the same story, but decks it out with up-to-date graphics and music. The game casts you in the role of Guybrush Threepwood, a swashbuckling young pirate searching for hidden treasure on the legendary Monkey Island. Along the way you have to solve all sorts of puzzles, defeat the ghostly pirate LeChuck and win the heart of the beautiful Elaine Marley. This version also includes a new help system that can give you the occasional hint for solving puzzles. Fans of the original will appreciate the option that allows you to switch between the original graphics and the new version whenever you want.

34. World of Goo

Company: Feral Interactive
UK sales: The Mac App Store
System Requirements: Mac with OS X 10.5.8, 1.8GHz Intel processor, ATI or Nvidia graphics card with 128MB VRAM
Price: £6.99

The Mac version of World of Goo is more expensive than the iOS version, so it might be worth checking out that first if you’ve got an iPhone or iPad. But whatever you play it on, it’s a charming and unique game. You are presented with a series of puzzles that are solved by combining blobs of goo to create various structures such as bridges and towers. Sometimes it’s not immediately clear what the puzzle is, so you have to figure that out first and then learn about the properties of different types of goo in order to work out the solution.

35. Osmos

Company: Hemisphere Games
UK sales: The Mac App Store
System Requirements: Mac with OS X 10.4.1 or later
Price: £6.99

Osmos is a puzzle/action game by Hemisphere Games that is popular on the iPad, althought it first appeared on the Mac and PC. You play the part of a lowly Mote, which looks like a single-celled organism. The goal is to become larger than all the other Motes on screen. Accomplishing this is simple – but not easy. When you collide with another Mote that is smaller than you, you absorb them and become that much larger in mass. Colliding with larger Motes on the other hand has the opposite effect and you quickly get swallowed up by them.

36. Machinarium

Company: Amanita Design
UK sales: The Mac App Store
System Requirements: Mac with OS X 10.6.6 or later
Price: £2.99

Machinarium is an charming, old-fashioned point-and-click adventure full of puzzles. You are cast as an adorable little robot who must find his way back home, rescue his girlfriend and stop a gang of robot hoodlums setting off a bomb. The beautiful, well-realised setting is a steampunk robot world where the inhabitants speak in thought balloons and pantomime. It’s an immersive experience and the haunting music and sound effects are wonderful. It may remind you of Pixar’s animated film Wall-E, but Machinarium doesn’t suffer from the comparison.