10 Masterpiece Video Games That Are Total Technical Powerhouses

4. Rise Of The Tomb Raider

Nowhere NEAR enough people played Crystal Dynamics' followup to the resurrected 'Raider from 2013. This newer instalment saw the team take a step back, analyse what worked (and what didn't) from the competition, before innovating accordingly.

As such, you had a slick open-world mentality applied to some vast landscapes, peppered with tombs to explore, secrets to uncover, enemies to fight and animals to hunt. An in-depth skill tree constantly unlocked meaningful new moves for Lara herself, and you were free to tackle encounters using a variety of stealth, action and item-based tactics. It wasn't open-world per se, but by making a series of set-pieces and 'levels' branch off from these hub worlds, it resulted in the best of both ideologies.

The overall spit n' polish here though, that's where Crystal Dynamics really excelled. You can tell they wanted Rise of the Tomb Raider to be an exemplary showcase of what they can accomplish when continuing a landmark franchise. As such, there's nary a bad texture, bug or glitch in sight, each character model looks stunning, and everything from lip-synching to crumbling temples or the light that refracts of a cave's walls looks almost photo-real.