Steam for Mac Adds Half-Life 2, EVE Online
The Mac editions of Valve's celebrated shooters Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two are now available through the digital distribution platform, while Tyrannis--the lastest update to CCP's space-faring MMO EVE Online--will hit "later today" and marks "Steam's first day-and-date release for the Mac and PC."
To commemorate the occasion, Steam has discounted all three Half-Life 2 titles by 30%, making Half-Life 2 $6.99, Episode One $5.59 and Episode Two $5.59.
Those that already own any of the Half-Life 2 titles via Steam PC will be able to download the respective Mac edition for free, thanks to a feature called SteamPlay that enables "customers to purchase a game once and play it on all Steam supported platforms."
In addition, all three Half-Life 2 titles support Steam Cloud--"allowing players to save their game progress on one computer, then seamlessly resume from that save point on another computer (Mac or PC)"--while Half Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One have been updated on both PC and Mac to include new Steam Achievements.
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I hope there's a demo so I can test whether I get acceptable frame rates on my new MBP with the Nvidia 320M
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Also more to the point, perhaps he's one of our new Macintosh gaming friends.
So to answer his question, there probably won't be a demo. However, the original game was released in 2004 so the hardware bar was pretty low compared to what you have now, so you should be good. Also, the games are cheap so snatch them up now.-
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Details here
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4502-TPJL-2656
Also note that it says for HL2 and HL2:EP1 this only works once, so you probably won't have extra copies if they do Orange Box 2 or something.
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Portal wasn't very good on Mac on my MBP with the 9400M which was surprising considering I played LOTRO at 1440x900 with very high textures and medium settings otherwise with 2xAA and it played at 40fps.
Portal looks more like 30fps with 2xAA...HL2 I'm hoping will be playable. A 320M is better than a 9400M though by far.