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1 of 15Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Activision's futuristic first-person shooter in which players take on a rogue private military company uses a brand new engine built specifically for PCs and new-gen consoles to handle its cutting-edge lighting, animation and physics.Sledgehammer Games/Activision -
2 of 15Far Cry 4. This pulled back shot of fictional Himalayan region Kyrat is in-game, believe it or not, rendered with an overhauled version of the engine Ubisoft used to design Far Cry 3.Ubisoft -
3 of 15The Last of Us: Remastered. Naughty Dog's meditation on the worst (and best) of humanity is built on technology that reaches back through the studio's pulp-adventure Uncharted series. The graphics are so impressive, TIME recently assigned a conflict photographer to photograph inside the game.Ashley Gilbertson for TIME -
4 of 15Alien: Isolation Built from scratch, the Alien: Isolation engine's outstanding deep space visuals all but replicate the set design of Alien film concept artists H.R. Giger and Ron Cobb's work.The Creative Assembly -
5 of 15Assassin's Creed Unity. Ubisoft says it "basically remade the whole rendering engine" in its AnvilNext design tool to handle the studio's meticulous recreation of Paris during the French Revolution.Ubisoft -
6 of 15Child of Light Inspired by filmmakers like Hayao Miyazaki and artist Yoshitaka Amano, Child of Light's hand-drawn artwork puts the lie to presumptions that graphical richness depends on shader support or polygon counts.Ubisoft -
7 of 15Destiny Built from scratch by ex-Halo studio Bungie, Destiny's game engine was designed to scale across the next decade, says the studio.Bungie -
8 of 15Mario Kart 8 Nintendo's kart-racer for Wii U reminds us that raw horsepower is just a facet of crafting a beautiful game world.Nintendo -
9 of 15Infamous Second Son Sucker Punch's freeform Seattle-based superhero adventure models all sorts of minutia, from the intricate wrinkling of an aged character's face to the way eyelids stick, slightly, before separating when characters blink.Sucker Punch Productions -
10 of 15Monument Valley Escher-like at first glance, Ustwo's mind-bending puzzler was also inspired by posters, bonsai plants, arabic calligraphy and filmmaker Tarsem Singh's The Fall.Ustwo -
11 of 15Grand Theft Auto V Rockstar's remastered crime spree opus was crafted from an in-house engine first employed in a game that simulated table tennis.Rockstar -
12 of 15TitanfallRespawn Entertainment -
13 of 15Forza Horizon 2 Turn 10's Euro-racer actually models light refracted through drops of moisture, the render tech plausibly simulating something as intangible but essential as the earth’s atmosphere.Microsoft Studios/Turn 10 Studios -
14 of 1580 Days Inkle's anti-colonialist vamp on Jules Verne's famous novel uses crisp art deco imagery inspired by travel posters to unfurl 80 Days' tale of intrepid globetrotters Monsieur Fogg and his valet Passepartout.Inkle -
15 of 15Tomb Raider Crystal Dynamics' radical reboot of its popular series about an athletic archaeologist uses a modified version of the engine that powered Tomb Raider: Legend in 2006.Square Enix
Read next: Dragon Age Inquisition Review: This Is the One You’ve Been Waiting For
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