Phoenix Wright, Half Life 2, and Chocobo Panic available now

Here's some quick hits on a few big name releases across Apple platforms. First up, the funny and addictive DS hit Phoenix Wright has made its way to the iPhone, and you can pick it up for US $4.99. While it's kept the two-screen gameplay from Nintendo's handheld, it's still a great time.

Square Enix has released another original title for the iPad; Chocobo Panic is a cute little puzzle/action game in which you grab and release the Final Fantasy-famous birds. Those expecting anything deeper will be disappointed, but if you want a fun touchscreen game with the slimmest of Final Fantasy ties, I hear it's fun.

Finally, as announced yesterday, Half Life 2 is now available for the Mac via Steam. And it tuns out that Episodes 1 and 2 have been released as well. The game itself is a jaw-dropping $7, and you can get the two add-ons for $5.59 each. If you already own them on Steam, they're all available via Steam Play, so that means you already own them on the Mac, too; just head into Steam and download away. AAA companies releasing games natively on Apple platforms? Man, it's a great time to be a Mac gamer.

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Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/26/chocobo-panic-revealed-as-…

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Here's some quick hits on a few big name releases across Apple platforms. First up, the funny and addictive DS hit Phoenix Wright has made...

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jonas

Performance of HL/Portal are really really sad, I downloaded the cider versions of The Orange Box before Steam came out and those games play much smoother than the "real" ones!

May 28 2010 at 3:37 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Richard

Pah, if only I could play. I just get "Steam servers are too busy please try later" every single time I attempt to download Portal or HL2.

May 27 2010 at 6:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Skoalbandit

Yeah they run better in windows. But we still got them which is better than nothing. Things can only get better. The performance gap is true of all games that are ported to OS X.

May 27 2010 at 2:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Arnan de Gans

I find the HL2 performance on mac very poor...

I have the C2D 3.06, 8GB ram, 27" iMac with both win7 and OSX. On win7 HL2 goes much much much smoother on higher settings.

Every time i walk into an open area, say the plaza or courtyard near the beginning of the game. The game stutters and drops frames everywhere. This is on the suggested medium settings at a resolution of 1280x720.

On Windows i can run HL2 at high settings at 1920x1080 just fine.

And i had such high hopes. I hope/expect this is fixable though.

May 27 2010 at 1:23 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Arnan de Gans's comment

Cristopher Boyer

The system requirements for Source-based games are considerably higher in OSX than they are in Windows. There's no explanation why, but where my copies of Half Life 2 and Portal run fine in Windows, I can't even run them in OSX at all.

May 27 2010 at 1:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jack

Confirmed. I had bought Orange Box for Windows a couple years back, and last night I got on Steam and there were Half Life 2, HL2 Ep. 1 and HL2 Ep. 2 waiting for me to download free of charge.

I am honestly shocked at Valve's complete 180 regarding the Mac. This doesn't feel like cursory Mac support, this feels like full on Mac support. This feels like a company who is excited to work on the Mac. This is the best thing to happen to gaming on the Mac since World of Warcraft honestly, or maybe Blizzard in general since they have always had outstanding Mac support.

And frankly, on my Mac Pro with a GTX 285 card, HL2 plays like butter with all settings all the way up. It's just how I remember it in Windows.

May 27 2010 at 1:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply