2023-07-16 15:33:45
Jacob Roach/Digital Trends There’s something seriously wrong with seeing Halo on a Mac. Apple computers aren’t known for gaming, of course, but Halo, in particular, feels out of place. It’s Microsoft’s star child, a franchise that Microsoft has hung its hat on for 22 years. But the game was originally designed for the Mac, and now you can play it directly on your MacBook. Apple’s recent suite of game porting tools makes it possible to play all kinds of Windows games on your Mac — in theory. Given the franchise’s rich history with Apple, I tried to see if the platform was ready for prime time and if I could fulfill Halo’s legacy as a game built specifically for the Mac. Hello Mac exclusive? Justin Sullivan/Getty Images It should come as no surprise that there’s no official way to play Halo on the Mac. Microsoft doesn’t currently own the game’s developer, Bungie, but it sure does. Halo, which means that the majority of the franchise has been exclusively available on Xbox and PC over the years. This is still true today with The Master Chief Collection, which has become the de-facto way to play all updated versions of games under one roof, unless Halo Infinite. However, there is a part of Halo’s history that Microsoft would prefer not to celebrate. Specifically, Bungie’s debut as the poster child for the Apple ecosystem — not Microsoft’s. The company was founded by Alex Seropian and Jason Jones in 1991. In 1992, the company released its first game: Minotaur. The game was originally developed by Jones, and the duo ported it to the Macintosh starting with the Apple II. From there, Bungie became one of the stars of Apple. Most people remember Bungie at Apple for its Marathon Trilogy, which was designed for the Apple platform as an alternative to PC exclusive shooters. Apple’s close partnership with Bungie in the company’s early years did not go unnoticed. It all came together at Macworld 1999, where Steve Jobs, in his black turtleneck, announced a new game designed exclusively for the Mac: Halo. It’s not the Halo we know today. The Master Chief is here, but the game was originally developed as a strategy game, and by the time it was announced at Macworld, it was a third-person shooter. Halo First Appearance – Official Then things changed. Microsoft bought Bungie in 2000 and introduced its first console exclusive, Halo: Advanced Combat. This Jobs could have been angry. Why? Apparently Jobs wanted to buy Bungie for himself. Halo: Advanced Combat was released in 2001 exclusively for Microsoft’s new Xbox console. Two years later, in 2003, it was finally ported to PC and Mac, following a promise made by Ed Fries, former vice president of game publishing at Microsoft. No other Halo game has been released for the Mac since then. The original Mac version is available if you watch it online, and you can even play it as long as you’re using macOS Mojave or earlier. Despite its origins, Halo remains as far from associated with Apple as you might imagine. But armed with Apple’s new Game Porting Toolkit, I was about to embark on a review story. The New Apple Game Transfer Kit Mess The Game Transfer Kit is a big deal. If you’re not familiar, this toolkit basically creates a Windows emulation environment within macOS itself. It’s designed as a development tool, allowing developers to test their games on a Mac in minutes before committing to a full port. It also supports DirectX 12, unlike other virtualization tools like CrossOver. More importantly, the Game Porting Toolkit is a free resource that you can download from Apple’s developer site — and it’s already being celebrated as a way to turn Macs into a legitimate gaming platform. To my great disappointment, setting up the Game Transfer Kit is quite complicated. To get started, you need to be using macOS Ventura, and you need the Xcode 15 beta for this to work. After you download and install the toolkit, Apple provides a description of its installation, which includes a barrage of commands you need to enter into the device. I’ve been trying this for hours, but I’ve never been able to get the Game Transfer Kit to work properly. In addition to installing the toolkit, you have to do some work to point it to the correct directory, configure Wine, and install storefronts like Steam, all from within the terminal. its a problem. I guess there’s a reason I’m a writer and not a game developer, right? Fortunately, I didn’t need to go through any trouble. An open source program called Whiskey can all of this be configured manually, and this is what I used to get the Game Porting Toolkit running on my MacBook Pro M1 Pro. It creates “bottles” containing various virtual machines, along with a GUI for configuring them. I created a bottle of Windows 10, downloaded the Windows installer files for Steam, put it into my C: virtual drive, and went shopping. Now it’s time to install and start MasterChef Collection. It took a few tries, but after several minutes I could hear the famous Gregorian chant through the MacBook Pro’s excellent speakers. strange. This is when things went off the rails. Halo Range comes pre-installed, and works decently. I did play some tasks, and aside from some minor stutters and a few graphical glitches, it was smooth even with the improved graphics preset. Halo CE Anniversary Edition was a completely different beast. The only way to get the game to work was to use the original textures — like 2001-era Xbox builds — and even then, the frame rate would crash every time I fought. Some levels, such as the final mission, called The Maw, did not load. Other missions, an outdoor map as vast as Silent Cartographer, turned into a slideshow even out of combat. Performance issues aside, there are definitely a lot of other issues with trying to play games this way. For starters, the anti-cheat software prevents you from playing any online multiplayer game. While you can live with it, there are a host of visual bugs and usability issues, and I’m sure I’ve only seen a fraction of those in the six Halo games included in the package. The most annoying thing was the fact that the overlays in the pause menu didn’t show up. This meant that I could not adjust the graphics settings while playing the game and had to quit the program if I wanted to quit the game. To be clear, all of these issues broke the plunge into claiming that this game was actually built for Macs. Despite all the setbacks, Master Chief Collection technically works on the Mac via the Game Porting Toolkit, and it was a bit surreal to see it work — warts and all. This feeling was even stronger when I ditched the official Apple toolkit and tried CrossOver. Since Halo can run on DirectX11, The Master Chief Collection became playable using CrossOver with an update in early 2022. Setup was easier and performance was more stable across all games. It still has its issues in CrossOver (especially with Halo 2), but for a fleeting moment I can imagine what that could be. I was able to see the alternate history where Apple bought Bungie and kept Halo Mac exclusive. How has Halo changed as a game franchise? Wouldn’t he have been a hit and influenced the future of first-person shooters the way he did? What would Xbox be without Halo as its flagship title? We’ll never know the answer to these questions, but it’s clear to see how Apple, owner of Bungie, can change the course of the Mac. If Apple had firmly planted its flag in the world of PC gaming, there would be no need for the Game Porting toolkit to exist. Who knows how different the Mac brand would have been if it had embraced gaming earlier. As it stands, the Game Transfer Toolkit is a first step toward recovering everything Apple lost more than two decades ago. For now, the final legacy of Halo on the Mac will remain just that. Editors’ recommendations
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