James Bedford's Blog"Well… I only write when I feel I have something decent to write about…"

Because I haven’t been gaming for a while now, I decided a couple of months ago that I should sell my Windows desktop computer. A year previously I’d fully switched to Mac OS X, and I was only using my desktop for the odd few games – of which Team Fortress 2 presided. What’s now awesome is that a couple of months later, Valve have released their content distribution system to the Mac. Steam.

Steam on Mac runs like a dream, and the new interface displays and manages all your games far better than the old one. Although, I have to say that I was more than a little disappointed with the initial line up of games for the Mac version of the platform. Valve had strongly implied that their catalog of source games would be readily available for Mac users. I found that this was a false assumption I’d been led to make, and when I loaded Steam for the first time, I found that only Portal was available of this collection of games. As awesome a game as Portal is, I’ve completed it about two years ago, and don’t really have any inclination to play it again! It turns out that apparently every Wednesday there are a series of new games released for the Mac. Effectively, every week there’s a random probability that the games I want to play, such as Counter Strike: Source, become available.

But I should put this aside, as the platform is a very enjoyable experience. I’ve found there to be a large amount of games available, and more are coming out all the time, and this is very good news for us Mac users. For the entirety of this weekend both Mac and Windows users can play one of the first cross-platform multiplayer games, Altitude, completely free! A game I may well have overlooked had it not been available to try, Altitude is a fun little 2D combat flight game with some typical game modes including ‘death-match’, ‘soccer’ and ‘demolition’. The most addicting feature of the game is its leveling and experience system, very similar to that found in Call of Duty 4. Kills, goals, level completions and achievements gain the user additional experience points, and at particular intervals the user gains an additional level, unlocking new planes, abilities, skins, and more! There’s definitely a lot to this initially simplistic-looking game. My house mate and I have just finished playing our first hour, I’ve reached level 10, and we’ve both gone straight to Steam‘s online store to purchase it for a currently discounted price of £3.50 – what a bargain!