I played Resident Evil Village on a 16-inch MacBook Pro and it was great.
It’s a weird thing for me to write considering how Macs haven’t exactly been the home of high-end games. During WWDC 2022, Apple announced that the latest installment of Capcom’s Survival Horror franchise would be coming to Macs. While this was certainly interesting, I was skeptical. Seeing No Man’s Sky running on an M1 Max powered MacBook Pro has finally given me hope for Mac gaming.
Now, Resident Evil Village has made me a believer. Gaming on Mac can be as good as on best gaming PCs or best gaming laptops, as long as the developers actually optimize their titles for Apple computers.
I played and finished Resident Evil Village on PS5 when it originally launched in May 2021. For that reason, I was extremely curious to see how it worked on a Mac. After spending some time playing with the intro, I have to say that I am very impressed with how it works and sounds.
It’s too early to tell if this is the ideal way to play Resident Evil Village. But if you have a Mac with an M1 chip or M2 chip, it’s worth a look. Here are my thoughts on Resident Evil Village on a MacBook Pro and my general thoughts on the future of Mac gaming.
When combined with Apple silicon, it is possible to play correctly at the PC level on macOS Ventura thanks to Metal 3,
When combined with Apple silicon, it is possible to play correctly at the PC level on macOS Ventura thanks to Metal 3, which is Apple’s new API (Application Programming Interface) for game developers. Metal 3 offers upscaling tools to render impressive graphics without suffering a huge performance impact. In fact, it can greatly improve performance.
One such tool is MetalFX Upscaling, which is effectively Apple’s answer to Nvidia DLSS, which uses AI to render graphics-intensive games without melting the GPU. Apple has a page dedicated to all things Metal (opens in a new tab). There are also a slew of videos (opens in a new tab) for developers looking to use Metal 3 to create games.
Suffice it to say that Apple hopes the updated API and its tools will help entice more developers, especially “AAA” developers, to create Mac games. Hopefully this should make Mac gaming machines more viable that also get games. branded at launch.
Resident Evil Village su Mac
I played Resident Evil Village on a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Max chip and 64GB of RAM. I selected “Priority to graphics” in the display settings as this setting (which reaches its maximum at a resolution of 2560 x 1440), is best for machines with an M1 Max chip, according to the company.
Using Apple Terminal, I enabled Metal Performance HUD, a development tool used to measure game metrics. This allowed me to see how Resident Evil Village performs both with and without MetalFX enabled. Basically, it’s similar to the performance overlays found on Steam and Nvidia GeForce Experience, only more involved.
The Metal Performance HUD shows you parameters such as screen resolution, refresh rate and frame rate. (Image credit: Apple)
To say I was shocked when I enabled MetalFX is an understatement. In Ethan’s house, frame rates immediately jumped to a low 200.
Without MetalFX enabled, I saw frame rates fluctuate around the low 100s as I walked around the house of the main protagonist (Ethan Winters) during the intro. Later, when the game moved onto a dark, snowy mountain, frame rates fluctuated more dramatically, dropping at worst to the low 70s. However, these are really impressive numbers with MetalFX turned off.
To say I was shocked when I enabled MetalFX is an understatement. In Ethan’s house, frame rates immediately jumped to a low 200. They dropped to 150 when I started shooting, but those are still very high frame rates. Frames entered the upper 80s when crossing the mountain, but I’m not complaining.
Frame rates dropped during this section of the game, but they never dropped before 70fps, which is pretty impressive. (Image credit: Apple)
I should note that performance didn’t take a big hit when I unplugged the Magsafe cable from the MacBook Pro. Typically, frame rates drop significantly on gaming laptops when unplugged, but that wasn’t the case here. And while I haven’t played games for long periods of time, I’ve never heard the MacBook Pro’s fans kicking in, nor has the laptop ever warmed up. Considering how some gaming notebooks start sounding like jet engines seconds after starting a game, this is a big win.
The future of Mac gaming looks bright
I always felt that the company’s silicon-powered Apple computers were squandering their gaming potential. As our M1 and M2 benchmark tests have repeatedly shown, Apple silicon machines often outperform those running Intel and AMD. However, gaming performance has always been a huge disappointment. Now I see that this doesn’t always have to be the norm.
No Man’s Sky and Resident Evil Village demonstrate that modern “AAA” games are possible on Macs as long as Apple and third-party developers work together to optimize the titles. If more developers use Metal 3 and Apple’s powerful processors, I see a bright future for Mac games. It may not happen for a while, but I like where things are going.
Resident Evil Village is now available on the Mac App Store.
