Can MacBook Pro M4 Max handle gaming like a Windows laptop with an RTX graphics card?

What are the Mac requirements, provided by the game-maker, for the game you most want to play?

if you meet the 'minimum', it will work, but maybe not at top performance levels.

if you meet the 'recommended', it will work nicely.

Keep in mind most games that have been available for macOS were made for the Intel Macs. In fact most of them were 32 bit games which can only run on macOS 10.14 or earlier. Even if it is a 64 bit game made for an Intel Mac it will likely perform poorly on an M-series Mac (if at all). I don't think there are very many games made for an M-series Mac....and if they exist, they will probably only be available in the Apple App Store at this time.

Unfortunately with Macs, you cannot always go by whether a computer meets or exceeds the Recommended System Requirements for a game since many times those requirements are not updated to reflect negative changes in later versions of macOS or CPU architecture changes. In fact, any Intel Mac games that may work now on an M-series Mac will stop working in a few years once Apple stops supporting Rosetta 2.

Having said this, you generally want to make sure the computer meets or better yet exceeds the Recommended System Requirements. You will always be disappointed if the computer only meets the Minimum requirements.

Macs have never been gaming computers. Yes, there are some games that will run well on a Mac, but they are just an extremely small number of games. If the game includes an online multiplayer component, many times it will not be cross platform multiplayer with Windows because the networking code tends to be different & many times even if the game supports online play with Windows the networking aspect may lag behind the Windows version.

Lesson to be learned, do your research on whether specific games will work on an M-series Mac in general and your Mac specifically. Usually you will want to check out the specific game's forum & reviews to see what people are saying about M-series support for a specific game.

For an M-series Mac, assume only games made specifically for an M-series Mac are supported & will perform well when meeting or exceeding the Recommended requirements.