Why does my Mac keep crashing when playing Batman: Arkham City?

Question

This is the second time I've played through this game. The first time I played the entirety of it without any crashes, but since then there was an Apple/OSX software/hardware update and now it crashes every 5 minutes or so. The update I'm talking about supposedly fixed graphics/GPU performance issues, so I'm wondering if that update is the problem now. Here's what I think is going on:
In order for the system to allow decent performance on the Retina model MacBook Pros, more GPU power had to be unleashed (either through some overclocking or just letting it run longer before slowing the processes down and kicking the fans up??) so they had to allow the GPU to get hotter, but now it gets too hot and so OS X is terminating the causal application, Arkham City, before any damage is done.
Also, no matter what graphics settings I use in the game the FPS rate average only changes from a low of 47 fps to high of 52fps. I'm not that into gaming, so I don't really know much about it, but that doesn't seem to make sense to me.
Here is a list of all the settings that I have ON when I get an average 45fps: Full Screen Anti-Aliasing: 8x; Detail Level: High, Dynamic Shadows: Yes, Motion Blur: Yes, Lens Flares: Yes, FXAA: Yes, Light Shafts: Yes, Reflections: Yes, Ambient Occlusion: Yes, V-Sync: Yes, and Particles: High
When I switch everything to either off or its lowest setting, it only gives me an additional 5-7fps, AND it still crashes, if anything, more often than when the higher settings are used. How can I get my Mac to let me play through this game like I used to?
The computer running Arkham City is a 2012 Macbook Pro with Retina Display, 15", Quad 2.7Ghz i7 w/8MB L3 Cache, 16GB RAM, and 768GB SSD, Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 1024MB + Intel HD4000.
Thanks for any help you can give!
P.S. If you haven't played the Batman Arkham series, I highly recommend them both (this current issue notwithstanding).

Answer 1

You can make an appointment with a Mac Genius at an Apple Store for a consultation. They will examine your Mac and try to figure out what might be wrong with it. The consultation is Free, whether you have AppleCare coverage or not.