7. Just Cause 2
Area: 400 sq mi
Enough area for stunts and insane action
Admit it or not. Just Cause 2 was one of the finest action games released last year. The amount of insane stunts and the carnage the player can perform is remarkable. It also meant that Avalanche studios had to design their environments in such a way that is different from the other open sandbox games like GTA. The world of Panau had flyovers, high ways, gigantic peaks and everything that made the game a world of its own.
6. Asheron’s Call
Area: 500 sq mi
This game was a technical innovation, read the para below to know more.
Asheron’s Call takes place on the fictional continent of Dereth. Since it is an MMORPG it always had a presence of thousands of online players within the sight of vision. The game was a technical feat for its time since it did not used zoning which divided the worlds in to different computer clusters in order to reduce loads. The drawback of zoning was that it caused a chunk of delay while moving between worlds. Instead, the game used dynamic balancing which let the cluster decide which area it had to control.
5. Test Drive Unlimited
Area: 618 sq mi
Ability to drive on islands and under water makes this one hell of a map
I don’t know why. But the Test Drive franchise does not have the same kind of following compared to Forza or Gran Turismo. Anyways, what will you do when you have 125 licensed cars in the game? You will obviously drive them in the beautiful locations of the Hawaiian Island, O’ahu. The entire terrain has been rendered after taking satellite images of O’ahu. You can also drive on the small islands (which are actually not part of the tracks) and under water too.
4. Fuel
Area: 5,560 sq mi
As big as the state of Connecticut :S
It’s amazing that this is the second racing game on the list which just goes to show that how much the racing genre has evolved in recent years. Fuel took place in a post apocalyptic world in which the weather had a huge effect on the races. The world was huge, over 5,560 sq mi in size and it had amazing weather effects like tornadoes, rain and sandstorms. Another game which proved the fact that Codemaster are indeed the masters of the racing genre.
