Click to enlarge

Barefeats has posted 3D gaming and Core Image benchmarks for the new Macbooks and their previous incarnation, Powerbook and iBook. The Apple notebooks were tested on Quake 4, Doom 3, and UT 2004 games.

Overall in three of the four tests, the Macbook Pro was the winner, while the Macbook with integrated graphics lagged behind all Apple laptops including previous generation laptops in all three of its tests.

ANALYSIS AND INSIGHTS
Sorry Apple, but the MacBook 13" is a "slouch" when it comes to 3D gaming and Tiger Core Image graphics. Even the iBook G4/1.42 with 32MB of VRAM beat it running Doom 3 and UT2004 Inferno Flyby. (We didn't test Quake 4 on the iBook since we no longer have one in the lab.)

Barefeats: Apple Laptops Face Off

MacBook (13-inch) (add to watch list)

Apple (add to watch list)

PowerBook G4 1.33 GHz (15 inch) (add to watch list)

iBook G4 (add to watch list)

Crystal Cave Gold is now available as a digital download from Macgamestore.com for $19.95. A free demo is available for download on the web site.

Search long-lost treasures in pitch black caves, pyramids and dark tombs of ancient temples in this wonderfull puzzle game! Huge gemstones were sheltered from the sunshine for eons of time waiting for those who are brave. You as an intrepid tomb seeker must resolve puzzles of pharaohs, aztecs, fight kings and show courage in many adventures to get them all.

Crystal Cave is a supreme family-fun puzzle game. Collect all crystals from ancient lost tombs. Challenge your brain!

For more on Crystal Cave Gold, follow the link below.

Macgamestore: Cyrstal Cave Gold

Macworld's Game Room recently posted a review of Teddy Factory, Toybox Games' colorful puzzle game. As factory workers players must assemble teddy bear parts as they move down a conveyor belt. To succeed they must keep up with the assembly line and meet customer requests for specific bear types. The Game Room gave Teddy Factor 3.5 out of 5 mice.

From the review:

As you make your bears, a robotic claw will pick up the completed teddies and drop them into boxes awaiting shipment. But you’ll also see kids on screen with specific requests—a green bear, for example, or a purple one, or a pink one—and it’s up to you to meet their needs in the time allotted. Do so, and you’ll be awarded extra points. Don’t do it, and it’ll be counted against you at the end of the round. The kids have short attention spans, alas—yellow highlights around their dialog bubbles (graphically showing you which bear they’ve requested) gradually dissipate —if they reach the end, then the child will walk away broken-hearted that the Teddy Factory wasn’t able to fill their order.

Managing to create enough bears in a short enough period of time and failing to disappoint any kids will increase your chances of early promotion and collecting additional awards between levels.

The assembly line doesn’t churn out an even amount of every bear, though, so sometimes you have to partly assemble one color bear while working on another. You must leave enough room on your assembly line so the bear parts don’t reach the end—if they do, it’s game over time.

Macworld's Game Room: Teddy Factory Review

Macgamestore: Teddy Factory

Toybox Games

Applelinks has posted an overview of Mystic Inn, an arcade game from Big Fish Games. In Mystic Inn, gamers play as a hostess who is trying to break a spell by selling food and drinks to the ever growing number of customers.

At the beginning of each level, a party of customers will arrive at the hostess station. Daphne seats them. They order. She takes their order. Their order arrives at the bar. Daphne retrieves their order. She serves the customers. They leave. She retrieves their payment. Repeat.

Again, this doesn't sound like much, but as the number of customers and tables starts to grow, and as their orders (potions, defined by color) become more complex, and as the owl arrives for takeout orders, and as dragons come to steal the potions, things start to get quite frantic. You'll find yourself juggling multiple parties at once, queueing up your next steps as you try to stay on top of the impatient customers.

Applelinks: Mystic Inn

Big Fish Games (add to watch list)

Mystic Inn

Click to enlarge

GameDaily has posted a review of Flip or Flop Home Edition, one of many casual Mac games developed by Big Fish Games. In Flip or Flop Home Edition, gamers must buy, sell, and renovate homes in order to pay back taxes to the government. In this review, the game received four of a possible five stars.

The best part of Flip Flop Home Edition is the fact that when you do well and flip a house at a large profit, the game gets harder. Instead of only a few pictures to line up and clear, you are given more and more small ones, with less time to clear the board. I can not even begin to tell you what a challenge this is, and the harder levels definitely made me flop a few times. However, once you flop, the game resets itself to an easier level, so you have a chance to redeem yourself and work your way back up to the more difficult level.

GameDaily: Flip or Flop Home Edition Review

Flip or Flop Home Edition

Toybox Games (add to watch list)

Click to enlarge

Atomic Gamer has posted a review of the recently released Heroes of Might and Magic V. The review covers all the aspects in the game including graphics, combat, gameplay, and factions. Everything considered, Heroes received a solid rating of 80% of 100%.

In the end, Heroes V is a good, fun game with a few problems. The graphics are some of the best I’ve ever seen in a strategy game while the sounds are pretty forgettable. The combat in the game is a blast but can be too easy. The single-player game is fun but manages to end sooner than it should with no possibility for player created campaigns (yet). Multiplayer is also lacking – a play-by-email system would have been a huge help to the game. Still, though, it is a good game despite these problems and well worth a pickup, especially with the promise of a map editor down the road.

AtomicGamer: HOMM V Review

Freeverse (add to watch list)

Ubisoft (add to watch list)

Heroes of Might & Magic V (add to watch list)

Buy Heroes of Might & Magic V

Click to enlarge

Applelinks has posted a review of the action shooter, Quake 4. Quake 4 is the latest game from Raven Software, sequel to Quake II, and the the review praises the game for taking the best parts of a first person shooter and enhancing them for a solid gaming experience.

Quake 4 doesn't advance the first-person shooter in any way, but that's fine; I believe that part of the continuing popularity in first-person shooters is their familiarity—gamers can install them and start playing without reading a manual or bothering to learn new controls. What Quake 4 does do is take most of the important elements in games of this type and polish them all up to a nice shine. The game is simply well developed, and it plays as if the developers at Raven had gripes about other first-person shooters and set to create one that corrected them. I mean, if they created a bio-mutant zombie Nazi alien first-person shooter that I can enjoy, then I can only imagine what genre fans will think of it.

Applelinks: Quake 4 Review

Aspyr Media (add to watch list)

Quake 4 (add to watch list)

Buy Quake 4

Search for other Mac games news stories or browse our Mac Games News Archive.