Last week we posted a first test video running Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning on the new 2.4GHz MacBook via a Windows XP Professional installation using Boot Camp. This weekend, I sacrificed many hours of my personal time installing and playing numerous games, including Half Life 2 (pictured above), on the MacBook to bring you this report. In short, the new MacBook has the horsepower to hold its own as a gaming laptop for the casual gamer.

For all the details of how WAR RvR matches, Half Life 2, Bioshock, Max Payne 2, Guild Wars, and the Mac version of Spore performed on the MacBook, click the continue reading link below.

Ignoring the problems using the MacBook's trackpad to play some of these games, the MacBook performed very well overall. I would recommend anyone wanting to play games on the MacBook invest in an external mouse.

Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning

I played several RvR scenarios this weekend in WAR on the MacBook and experienced no problems whatsoever. I also hooked up a 24-inch Dell monitor to the MacBook, set that display as the primary display, and turned off the built-in screen. Playing on an external screen I did notice some slight dropped frames from time to time, but the game remained playable and I experienced no real lag.

Bioshock

I wanted to test Crysis on the MacBook, but I don't own a copy and there wasn't a demo available, however, there was a demo of Bioshock, another DirectX 10 game. As you can see from the Graphics Option screen pictured above, the DirectX 10 Detail Surfaces setting was fully disabled. Despite this, with all the other settings set on high the game played flawlessly with no lag or visual artifacts. I also cannot be sure if the DirectX 10 Detail Surfaces setting is off by default in the demo, no matter the capabilities of your computer.

Guild Wars

Guild Wars, pictured above, played flawlessly—as well as on any PC I've ever played the game on.

Max Payne 2

Max Payne 2 recognized the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card and allowed for D3D Hardware texture and lighting. The game looked great and played without any problems beyond its inherent overly dramatized narrative.

Half Life 2

Half Life 2 was the first game other than Warhammer Online that I tried on the MacBook, and it was the only one where I experienced any real problems. The first time I started playing the game, it crashed during a loading screen when I moved from one area to a new area. After it crashed, I discovered that my virus scanner had been running and that I had neglected to disconnect from JungleDisk, my networked data storage solution. I turned off my virus scanner, disconnected from Jungle Disk and relaunched Half Life 2 and played for about an hour with no problems except for a few slight redrawing artifacts during the opening "Wake up!" sequence.

Spore on OS X

The great news is that native Mac games. like Spore, run flawlessly on the MacBook. That might sound obvious, but when I initially downloaded the demo of Spore Creature Creator for Mac earlier this year, the game wouldn't launch because the integrated Intel graphics card on my old MacBook couldn't handle the detailed graphics of the game.

I've always been a Mac user and, as a result, I've also been more of a console game player than a PC gamer. Now that my Mac can serve as a gaming PC, I think that's about to change.