(dramatic music)
- [Presenter] Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition
was recently ported to Mac by Feral Interactive,
and is available right now on Steam,
or from the Feral store.
Originally, it was published by Square Enix,
and developed by Eidos Montreal for Windows and consoles.
Unfortunately, I only had time
to play the game on one Mac model,
which is an iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch from 2019.
Usually I play the game on a 13-inch MacBook Pro,
but I just simply ran out of time.
Before we go into the performance
of the actual game on my machine,
let's go over the requirements.
So, in order to play the game, you are going to need
Mac OS 10.15 installed.
Your processor needs to be an Intel Core i5 2 Ghz.
Your RAM needs to be 8GB.
The game will take up 40GB of hard-drive space.
And your graphics card needs to be a
2GB AMD Radeon R9 M290,
or a 1.5GB Intel Iris 540.
Those requirements are pretty high,
but it's really impressive that Feral Interactive
were able to get this game
to be playable in Intel Iris graphics.
Now there are actually quite a number
of Macs that are able to play this game,
so Shadow of the Tomb Raider is officially supported
on the following Macs.
To check your Mac model and when it was released,
select About This Mac from the Apple menu
on your menu bar.
The game is supported on,
All 15 inch MacBook Pros released since late 2016.
All 13 inch MacBook Pros released since 2016.
All 21.5 inch iMacs released since 2017.
All 27 inch iMacs released since late 2014.
All 27 inch iMac Pros released since late 2017.
And all Mac Pros released since late 2013.
That is quite a range of Macs
that are able to play the game.
Sure, the previous game, more Macs were able to play it,
but this is the new experience, so it's obviously
going to have some more higher requirements.
Still, some older machines
have the capacity to enjoy this title.
Don't be upset yet if you don't have one of those Macs,
because there are some not-officially supported hardware.
For example, the following Macs are capable
of running the game, but do not consistently meet
the standards required for official support.
This would be all 13 inch MacBook Airs released since 2018.
All 12 inch MacBooks released since early 2016.
All 21.5 inch iMacs released since late 2015,
with an Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200 graphics card.
I mean, it is absolutely incredible that this game
is able to run on these machines,
especially MacBooks from 2016, and even a MacBook Air.
Holy moly, that is incredible, and I just,
I take my hat off to you guys.
Also this game officially supports eGPU's,
and that's pretty good because
if you have any Thunderbolt 3 Mac,
you can connect one of these external graphics cards
and you will be able to play the game at some capacity.
But it is still very dependent on the hardware in your eGPU,
and if your Mac's processor meets
the system requirements of the game.
Mac performance, how did it go?
Well my iMac is a pretty powerful beast.
I mean, I just bought it, because I really needed
to update my old 2015 5K iMac.
Since this game takes advantage of Metal API features
new to Mac OS 10.15, based on my experience
the performance is exceptional.
So I'm playing at a resolution of 1920 by 1080,
otherwise known as 1080p.
My quality preset is on high.
I have Vsync on,
because I really do not enjoy screen tearing.
This just is a more consistent experience
with this setting on.
And my average framerate is 60.
Occasionally, I would see like a minor lag spike
after cut-scenes, and there was one time where
the game froze for a few seconds.
But that's not that bad at all,
because on average the game just consistently stays at 60.
It is awesome, the performance is absolutely exceptional.
I mean, I know I have a really powerful Mac,
but it was a really good experience.
Playing a game of this caliber,
at 60 frames, was really nice.
Now I could also play at 4K,
but I would have to have my settings on medium,
and my frame rate would be an average of 30.
And even that is pretty incredible.
Now if you are running the game,
and you're having some performance issues,
frame-rate drops, et cetera,
there are a few things you can do
under the graphics page to help with this.
So if you have an older model, like a MacBook Pro,
or a MacBook, an older iMac for instance,
it's best to play this game
on probably a low or medium quality preset.
And you can also put Pure Hair to low.
You can turn off Screen Space Reflections, and Bloom.
And you can also put Anti-Aliasing to Off.
Just messing with the quality preset alone
should help you dramatically.
Feral Interactive should actually
automatically set the correct graphical options
when you start the game,
so you probably don't even need to play with the settings.
I mean, I didn't, I went straight in,
looked at the settings like, "Oh, they're fine,"
and just went straight in and it was great.
Feral Interactive have also brought us HDR support,
or High Dynamic Range.
I couldn't put it on in this video,
because it wouldn't really translate in the footage,
because I don't have a HDR capture card.
Now, using HDR features
will be dependent on the Mac you have,
and it's displays.
The 5K iMacs are the best for this feature.
Feral Interactive have told me
that setting the system brightness level below 70%,
ideally 50%, produces the best effect for this HDR feature.
It's also worth noting that
in order for HDR mode to be effective in this game,
Automatically Adjust Brightness must be disabled
in your system preferences.
And to end it all, what do I actually think about this game?
What I noticed with this one compared to the others is
there is a really big sense
of Lara's choices that she makes,
and seeing how people are affected by this,
how a community's affected, or just individuals,
it made it more enriching,
and you felt really connected to the story,
and that's what I really loved about it.
And just the gameplay, it's fantastic.
Visually this game is just exceptional,
and being able to play it at high settings
really brings out all the details,
and especially if you play it in 4K
if you're able to have that capacity to do so.
Not only that, the sound design too is out of this world,
and on my speakers it was really nice just to listen to,
and the voice acting as well.
To have watched these guys from the first game
to the third one here,
and see how they have developed as characters
has been really nice.
But yeah, that's pretty much how these reviews work.
I show you what it performs like,
and what I think of the game,
and that's pretty much it.
Let me know in the comments if you have tried this game yet,
if you're going to, and on what Mac model.
That is what I'm very interested about.
Let me know how it performs on your machine.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
I know these reviews don't get much attention
compared to my other videos, especially Apple Arcade,
so I'm very thankful for
whoever decides to watch this video,
and if you've made it to the end.
So, thank you, very much.
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Anyway, thanks for watching.