Well folks, it’s finally happened. After years of iteration,
The road to get here hasn’t been simple.
But with the MacBook Pro, powered by
Cynicism, meet optimism
I’ll admit to being cynical, prior to jumping in. I’ve tried gaming on older MacBooks before, and it hasn’t always gone well. Playing a low-spec indie game on my former MacBook Pro (a 2017 model) was a lot like pulling teeth. Think burning hot chassis, plenty of wheezing, and an instantly-depleted battery. We’ve come a long way.
Kicking off Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the game immediately booted to smooth scenes, with Naoe in her hideout, surrounded by warrior pals. As optimised, the visuals were lightly jaggy, which sparked early alarm bells. But after an adjustment to a 60FPS target and 3024 x 1964 resolution (the maximum allowed), the game still performed smoothly.
Not only smoothly in action, but it had a frame rate consistency that was akin to playing the game on PlayStation 5. Running through most terrains, the game was able to run with zero noticeable frame rate drops or input lag – which I guess, was what I was expecting throughout. While areas of terrain density (with lots of trees, grasses, flowers, and hills) did create some minor visual inconsistencies, this happened only rarely.
For the vast majority of my time with the game, I might as well have been playing on a dedicated gaming console, with the crispness and dynamism of visuals to match. Colours are bright and vivid on-screen, textures are crisp with no pop-in or load issues, and running through fields, you get the full gamut of impressive visuals and sounds from the game.
As one of the prettiest Assassin’s Creed games to date, it’s a feather-in-the-cap achievement. In parts, I was convinced the textures looked prettier and sharper on the MacBook Pro than they did playing the game on my PS5, with a brand new HDMI 2.1 TV.
The MacBook Pro played Shadows without strain
What was most impressive about this performance was the MacBook Pro didn’t really seem like it was straining to deliver the crispy action I expected. The laptop’s fans don’t activate in my day-to-day of writing – you can’t hear them at all – and playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows, they only activated with a low, steady hum. I could still hear everything I needed to hear, playing without headphones, and the hum wasn’t enough to disrupt my experience, even though it was noticeable.
As a brief mention here, the sound system of the laptop also aided the experience. It’s got a real deep range, with rich, booming notes that give you cinematic sound quality. For a video game, that gives you the depth and drama you need as you travel. Light fan noise over the top didn’t really make much difference.
The fans also help to keep the chassis warm, rather than hot. Playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the laptop’s upper half was warm, and what I would describe as warm-to-hot on the thin bar above the laptop keyboard. I expect it would keep in a lap, and wouldn’t become too hot to handle. After just over an hour of gameplay, the heat also didn’t rise or change at all.
What did change? The battery. As a test, I played Assassin’s Creed Shadows without being attached to power – and it accomplished all of the feats mentioned above on battery power. The caveat here is the MacBook Pro will chew through battery fast in this mode, as you might expect.
On a typical gaming laptop, you might get 2-3 hours of battery life, if you’re lucky. My personal gaming laptop, which was purchased in 2019, will play a AAA games for around 1.5 hours before giving up. So when the MacBook Pro lasted 1 hour, 20 minutes playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows on battery, I wasn’t really surprised.
It may be disappointing for some, however. With the power of the laptop and its M4 chip, I was curious to see how long it would last on battery. I thought perhaps it would hit closer to the two hour mark, but that’s simply not the case. At the very least, you can rest assured that as one of the newer games available for the MacBook Pro, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is also likely to be one of the most demanding, so that 1 hour, 20 minute battery drop will be rare.
If you’re playing any other game – such as a visual novel, a diving adventure, or a puzzle game – you will get a longer-lasting battery, as tested. Playing one upcoming game (which I can’t mention yet), I found the laptop remained cool, and the fan was unnecessary. When finishing an hour demo, the battery had only depleted by around 15% – which is a very different result. So, there’s a high degree of variability here, and different games will require more or less battery, depending on scale.
To finish up my testing with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, I popped the charger back in (it’s a snap charger with a braided cord) and rode on to the next goalpost, colours streaming past me. In cutscenes or in action, the game remained gorgeous, and I was consistently impressed by everything I saw along the way.
It might seem gimmicky or strange to have new AAA games landing on Mac, only because of precedent. For years, Windows PCs have dominated conversations around gaming, with Mac laptops flagging behind in the performance and compatibility stakes. Now, finally, these laptops are heading to par, with new chips capable of the strong, consistent performance needed to play modern games.
As someone with a Mac for work, and a Windows PC for gaming, I’m captivated by the idea of combining both uses into a single machine. Assassin’s Creed Shadows proved to me that it’s possible.
A code for Assassin’s Creed Shadows and a 2024 MacBook Pro were provided by
