I just played Resident Evil Village on MacBook Pro — and now I’m a Mac gaming believer

Resident Evil Village on Mac
(Image credit: Future)

I’ve played Resident Evil Village on a MacBook Pro 16-inch and it was glorious.

That’s a strange thing for me to write considering how Macs haven’t exactly been the home of high-end gaming. During WWDC 2022, Apple announced that the latest entry in Capcom’s Survival Horror franchise was coming to Macs. While that was certainly interesting, I remained skeptical. Seeing No Man’s Sky running on an M1 Max-powered MacBook Pro finally gave me hope for Mac gaming.

Now, Resident Evil Village has made me a believer. Gaming on Macs can be just as good as on the best gaming PCs or best gaming laptops, provided developers actually optimize their titles for Apple’s computers.

I played and finished Resident Evil Village on PS5 when it originally launched in May 2021. Because of that, I was extremely curious to see how well it ran on a Mac. After spending some time playing through the introduction, I have to say I’m very impressed with how it runs and plays.

It’s too early for me to say whether or not this is the ideal way to play Resident Evil Village. But if you have a Mac packing an M1 chip or M2 chip, it’s well worth checking out. Here are my thoughts on Resident Evil Village on a MacBook Pro and my overall thoughts on the future of Mac gaming.

Metal 3 makes the magic happen 

When combined with Apple silicon, proper PC-level gaming is possible on macOS Ventura thanks to Metal 3,

When combined with Apple silicon, proper PC-level gaming is possible on macOS Ventura thanks to Metal 3, which is Apple’s new application programming interface (API) for game developers. Metal 3 offers upscaling tools to render impressive graphics without taking a huge hit on performance. In fact, it can substantially improve performance.

One such tool is MetalFX Upscaling, which is effectively Apple’s answer to Nvidia DLSS, which uses AI to render graphically intensive games without melting your GPU. Apple has a page dedicated to all things Metal. There are also a slew of videos for developers who want to use Metal 3 to create games.

Suffice it to say that Apple hopes the updated API and its tools help entice more developers — specifically “AAA” developers — to make games for Macs. This should hopefully make Macs more viable gaming machines that also get marque games at launch.

Resident Evil Village on Mac

I played Resident Evil Village on a MacBook Pro 16-inch packing an M1 Max chip and 64GB of RAM. I selected “Prioritize Graphics” in the display settings since this setting (which maxes out at 2560 x 1440 resolution), is best for machines with an M1 Max chip, according to the company.

Using Apple Terminal, I enabled the Metal Performance HUD, which is a developer tool used to measure a game’s metrics. This allowed me to see how well Resident Evil Village performs both with and without MetalFX enabled. Basically, it’s similar to the performance overlays found on Steam and the Nvidia GeForce Experience, only more involved.

 The Metal Performance HUD shows you metrics like screen resolution, refresh rate and frame rates. (Image credit: Apple)

Saying I was shocked when I enabled MetalFX is an understatement. In Ethan’s home, frame rates instantly jumped into the low 200s.

Without MetalFX enabled, I saw frame rates hover in the low 100s while I walked around the main protagonist’s home (Ethan Winters) during the intro. Later, when the game shifted to a dark, snow-covered mountain, frame rates fluctuated more dramatically — dipping into the low 70s at worst. Still, those are very impressive numbers with MetalFX off.

Saying I was shocked when I enabled MetalFX is an understatement. In Ethan’s home, frame rates instantly jumped into the low 200s. They dropped to the 150s when I began walking around, but those are still very high frame rates. Frames dipped into the upper 80s when traversing the mountain, but I’m not complaining.

Resident Evil Village

Frame rates dropped during this section of the game but they never dropped before 70 fps, which is quite impressive. (Image credit: Apple)

I should note that performance didn’t take a hit when I unplugged the Magsafe cable from the MacBook Pro. Typically, frame rates drop substantially on gaming laptops when you unplug, but that wasn’t the case here. And though I didn’t play for extended periods of time, I never once heard the MacBook Pro’s fans kick in, nor did the laptop ever get warm. Considering how some gaming notebooks start to sound like jet engines seconds after booting up a game, this is a huge win.

The future of Mac gaming looks bright 

I’ve always felt that Apple computers powered by the company’s silicon were squandering their gaming potential. As our M1 benchmark and M2 benchmark tests have repeatedly demonstrated, machines with Apple silicon often outperform those running on Intel and AMD. However, gaming performance was always a huge disappointment. I now see that this doesn’t always have to be the norm.

No Man’s Sky and Resident Evil Village prove that modern “AAA” gaming is possible on Macs so long as Apple and third-party developers work together to optimize titles. If more developers make use of Metal 3 and Apple’s powerful processors, I see a bright future for Mac gaming. That may not happen for some time, but I like where things are going.

Resident Evil Village is now available on the Mac App Store.

Next: This is the one Apple Arcade game you need to play now — it is Apple Arcade's answer to Dark Souls. And here's why I’m loving Persona 5 Royal on Switch — even after playing the original for 100 hours. The Witcher Remake is exactly why we have remakes.

Tony Polanco
Computing Writer

Tony is a computing writer at Tom’s Guide covering laptops, tablets, Windows, and iOS. During his off-hours, Tony enjoys reading comic books, playing video games, reading speculative fiction novels, and spending too much time on X/Twitter. His non-nerdy pursuits involve attending Hard Rock/Heavy Metal concerts and going to NYC bars with friends and colleagues. His work has appeared in publications such as Laptop Mag, PC Mag, and various independent gaming sites.

  • uri_b
    The Mac died a long time ago when it comes to gaming, too late for this expensive platform for no reason.
    Your data on the game is not impressive when taking into account the price of the Mac.
    By the way, you need to play RE7 to enjoy and understand the story of RE8.
    Reply
  • SeaRefractor
    The Mac died, but long live the Apple Silicon Mac. With the advent of the Apple Silicon based MacBooks, the hardware has had a fundamental change bring excellent power/performance. With Metal 3/MetalFX, I expect that a number of exciting titles with fantastic performance will come to the Macverse.

    Will it supplant PC gaming? Of course not, and I don't expect that the article writer implied that either. But for those that have purchased the new Apple Silicon series of MacBooks (which has been a surprisingly phenomenal market success for Apple), a number of select AAA titles will become available "natively".
    It's more reborn and in its infancy.
    I'm not saying one should run out and purchase an Apple Silicon MacBook for gaming, but it's not dead. It's got more legs than Google Stadia ;)
    Reply
  • ikir
    Playing it on MacBook Air M2 and Mac Studio M1 Max... it works so good that it is unbelievable
    Reply
  • Enemy Insect
    uri_b said:
    The Mac died a long time ago when it comes to gaming, too late for this expensive platform for no reason.
    Your data on the game is not impressive when taking into account the price of the Mac.
    By the way, you need to play RE7 to enjoy and understand the story of RE8.
    What it's good for is people like myself who are in the design field and have an M Series MacBook Pro that enables us to play these games at respectable settings and frame rates when away from our desktop gaming rigs... I've got a 5950X/3080 Ti setup as my main gaming rig , but when I'm away from that, it's nice to be able to filter all the Mac games on Steam and play something from my library

    What I'd really like to know, specifically about RE:V is... will the Metal 3 version come to Steam so I don't have to RE:Buy it :)

    Can't find any info on that
    Reply
  • Don Gino
    uri_b said:
    The Mac died a long time ago when it comes to gaming, too late for this expensive platform for no reason.
    Your data on the game is not impressive when taking into account the price of the Mac.
    By the way, you need to play RE7 to enjoy and understand the story of RE8.

    Apple's ongoing and accelerating success must be painful for you to watch.

    Love to see it.
    Reply