The Sims 4 has finally arrived for Mac users! If you own a copy of The Sims 4 on PC then you are automatically entitled to the Mac version of the game on Origin.
Ports are always a tricky things with games – you can either use emulation technology, such as Cider, or produce a native port (coding from the ground up) for the operating system. The Sims 3 used ‘Cider’ to act as a Windows wrapper which unfortunately led to many problems for Mac users and extremely slow performance. So the question on every Mac user’s mind is… will Sims 4 on Mac be the same?
Thankfully, The Sims 4 for Mac is a solid port. By that I mean the performance is on-par with the Windows version of the game which I truly didn’t expect following Sims 3 on Mac. Many Mac users resorted to playing Sims 3 on Bootcamp (which allows you to run Windows) on their Macs, however I’m confident that Mac users will not even have to think about doing this with The Sims 4!
The game starts up quickly from Origin, the game is buttery smooth (most of the time) and I achieve a steady 30-50 frames per second while playing, depending on what I am doing. This is on my Late 2012, 21.5-inch iMac with a 512mb GDDR5 NVIDIA graphics card with settings on high and objects on medium.
While I mostly have positive things to say about The Sims 4 on Mac, there are a few problems that I have encountered while playing the game, mainly graphical glitches and enormous lag spikes. Graphical issues have included the world suddenly flashing black and a radiation of black coming from a specific area covering the screen (recreated in the picture below).
In terms of lag, the game will go from buttery smooth to being extremely laggy and slow, which is sometimes resolved by restarting the game. Although it’s as if the game struggles when the camera is facing a certain way on some lots/in some neighbourhoods. I am yet to identify anything that is triggering this but it continues even if I lower the graphics settings.
Overall Verdict
As I said at the start, The Sims 4 on Mac is a solid port which I am extremely happy to see. I have always said that waiting for a decent Mac port is always worth it and that has been the case with The Sims 4. Mac users can now rejoice and play alongside PC simmers without having to use Windows.
There are a few issues that I am still experiencing as highlighted above, that I hope EA will iron out pretty quick. However, this port means I no longer have to use Windows and EA should be pleased with their Mac version of the game!
On behalf of all Mac Simmers, thank you EA!
Hey! Can you tell me if it is good for retina display? 🙂
I am running this on a Late 2007 24in iMac 4GB ram. It runs really smooth. It has 4GB RAM and 256MB VRAM. I ws surprised to find it actually ran better on the iMac than on my PC which has 8GB RAM Intel HD 4400 with 1GB VRAM. The only issue I do see however is on the MAC port, waiting on Sims to begin actions can take up to 10 game seconds and multitasking seems to be broken with some actions. On my PC version My sim was able to write a book, chat with his wife and listen to the radio all at the same time. On my Mac version, as soon as someone comes up to talk, My sim turns the computer off to speak with them… ??? Felt like I was playing the Sims 3 again, but much prettier.
we