Rage: Beautiful Decay
Rage is fucking gorgeous. I haven't seen many games look this good on console (I played on 360). Though the first half of the game takes place in a literal wasteland, the world is deliciously depicted through the id Tech 5 engine. Towns - even the drab desert city of Wellspring - are teeming with personality, in everything from their denizens to the bills posted on the job board. Once you move on to the city of Subway Town later in the game, prepare for an amicable assault in the most visual sense. Fucking gorgeous. The main drawback here is the frustration inducing texture pop-in that afflicts most every area of the game. Look, I don't know much about the development process, hardware limitations, or 3D modeling. But a game as pretty as Rage shouldn't be affected by such a dumb design drawback as pop-in. It's annoying to be completely entranced by this artificial world only to be taken back to reality when you notice the textures around you take a split second or slightly longer to load in. Sure, it may not sound like much, but it's noticeable, and it sucks. Though pop-in aside, Rage is best looking game I've played all year.