In recent times, the discussion of how much a vast expanse of land in video games can stretch out across has often been brought up, especially within the open world genre, where developers take risks to ensure it looks both stunning and awe-inspiring to explore.
Many players tend to overlook the quality of even the smallest details these days, particularly in games that showcase an impressive scale of verticality—letting you know, clear as day, just how massive and intricately designed their worlds are.
And today, I’ve taken the opportunity to showcase to you my personal picks of open world games that have the best display of verticality, from their map design to how exploration works around that impressive element.
10 Towers of Aghasba
A World Worth Healing
Ever have that moment where you stumble upon something truly promising? Well, I had the chance to play a bit of Towers of Aghasba during my occasional moments of Steam bargain bin diving.
Despite this title still being in the Early Access phase as of writing, it’s a game that makes it worthwhile to be included here.
Towers of Aghasba is a city builder that gets infused with Breath of the Wild’s exploration and world design. Two components that make the world you heal and nurture feel that much more intriguing to explore.
There are some rough hinges that the game’s still polishing, but if you have a friend or two and love anything that remotely resembles SimCity, then this game is worth the morbid curiosity, especially for its acceptable price tag.
Plus, with how you can climb, scale, and glide throughout the majority of the terrain, it’s a game with a promising verticality that you wouldn’t expect at all.
9 Crackdown
Superhuman Absurdity
While I’d love to tackle recent titles, the statement about impressive verticality instantly brought Crackdown to mind, especially given the sheer amount of fun I had playing it on my Xbox 360 as a teenager.
As someone who found joy in all things being comical or absurd, I didn’t play the game for the story, but rather for its sandbox-styled gameplay in Pacific City’s open-ended metropolis.
In this world, you could scale and super jump across its mile-high skyscrapers and buildings while simultaneously causing mass destruction with your superhuman abilities, as long as you kept collecting those gazillion orbs.
Although I didn’t get the chance to fully immobilize every main crime lord, it’s a game that still retains a cult following all these years later, thanks to how much it meant to people who loved sandbox fantasy titles—also evident in how many fans are begging for a proper remake to this day, including me.
8 Xenoblade Chronicles X
A Bleak Post Dystopian Tale
With the recent release of Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition this year, it seemed fitting to give a shout-out to the game that pushed the Wii U to its limits during the original release window.
Monolith Soft is known for creating sprawling and breathtaking landscapes, as seen in the main Xenoblade series. However, I kid you not, the massive continents spanning across Mira are where I think they truly knocked it out of the park.
Besides the continents you can explore at your whim, accessing your Skells truly takes it to the next level, allowing you to fly off and discover floating islands and various other layered details that make the world feel larger than you would initially expect.
7 Subnautica
The Ocean With No End
As someone with mild thalassophobia, I wouldn’t have been interested in discussing Subnautica if it weren’t for its jaw-dropping underwater world, which is brilliantly designed in a way that initially makes the verticality seem less noticeable.
Unlike other open-world survival games, the game’s oceanic planet is hellishly designed in a way that you’ll slowly peel back the curtains on its sunlit trenches to melancholic underdepths where the deadliest sea creatures will await to strike at you.
The game takes pride in that verticality and even uses it to induce fear as you descend into the deeper parts of the world.
You’ll obviously stumble into vibrant and intriguing coral reefs or mini-biomes, but tread too far out, and you may just fall prey to the Leviathan, and trust me, you don’t want to be on the receiving end when it notices you.
6 Dying Light
Good Night, Good Luck
Having just finished playing through the sequel with my friends in co-op and looking forward to the Beast with Kyle Crane’s return, I have an immense guilty pleasure for the original Dying Light and the verticality it brought to the table, along with its parkour gameplay.
The ruinous city of Harran is intricately designed to let you use it as your personal playground in navigating past the hordes of zombies or narrowly escaping the nightmarish Volatiles at night.
Whether it’s on the ground or the intended way of zooming across the sun-soaked rooftops, Techland really did something special here that unfortunately couldn’t evolve with the second installment.
Of course, you won’t initially notice this detail, but as you unlock more parkour skills and eventually, the grappling hook, you’ll realize just how crazy good the multifaceted exterior of Harran is to explore, especially when you’ve mastered the free-flow traversal options given to you here.
5 Batman: Arkham Knight
The Dark Knight’s Finest Hour
Batman: Arkham Knight is a fantastic example of an open-world game with a simple yet deeply woven verticality, thanks to its expansive open world that features layering via its enterable buildings, underground tunnels, and street levels.
With a last hurrah from Rocksteady to their masked crusader, they really went above and beyond to make Gotham as dynamic as ever.
Founders Island is a prime example of how its upper and lower street levels feel worlds apart from one another, with Riddler trophies hidden throughout the map, such as at the top floors of skyscrapers or in the underbelly of the city. For a game that’s now a decade old, it honestly holds up phenomenally even to this day.
Even the game’s exploration is built around this concept of exploring the world’s verticality, whether you are up there gliding in the skylines of Gotham, looking for the Man-Bat, or at street level in your Batmobile, taking on the Arkham Knight’s militia in vehicular gunfights.
4 Echo Point Nova
Accelerating and Exhilarating
A gem that I haven’t seen many people talk about lately is an open-world shooter called Echo Point Nova, which is similar in essence to Ultrakill or Titanfall—an FPS that pulls no punches as well as requires the utmost precision and speed for its skill ceiling.
It’s from the same people who brought you Severed Steel, and if you haven’t even played that, what are you doing with your life?
Echo Point Nova thrives in being a first-person shooter that’s all about thrills and no-filler, all-killer action. It’s just you and your grappling hook as you effortlessly take down mercenary forces across each of the gorgeous biomes in solo or cooperative play with up to three other players.
The world and map itself are intricate yet so connected, from hopping across floating islands at supersonic speed with your grappling hook to surfing across large landscapes with ease on your hoverboard.
This is a “kill ’em all” shooter that I strongly suggest grabbing because the game is still getting updates, especially with a recent free expansion.
3 Gravity Rush 2
It’s All Relative
While I heavily adore both entries, Gravity Rush 2 amps up the quality of the original, especially with its reimagined setting that includes new locations for Kat to explore and head to for story purposes and exploration.
And for those unfamiliar with it, Gravity Rush’s world is one that I’m very fond of, from its industrialized yet vibrant urban hubs and coastal towns, and maze-like dungeons, all of which are traversed with comfort via Kat’s Gravity powers.
Although slightly wonky and motion-sickening for some (which is totally understandable), if you give it the proper attention that it deserves, I’m willing to bet you’ll love exploring this magnificent world in the skies that looks straight out of a children’s fantasy novel—enough to warrant it as a game that has a unique sense of verticality in its world design.
2 The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Floating Islands & Melancholic Subsurfaces
As I mentioned, an open-world game that nailed a world in the sky with Gravity Rush, it only felt right to include Tears of the Kingdom, whose world design was built on the foundation of showcasing impressive verticality.
Unlike Breath of the Wild, the sequel managed to up the ante by providing players with two whole layers to the map. The main thematic floating islands in the skies, as well as an entire below-surface world called The Depths, which is engulfed in darkness and filled with hostile threats.
The base map of Hyrule might feel the same, but thankfully, much of the environmental design has been altered. You’ve also got a bunch of new activities and secrets to discover—though many of those are Shrines, but I digress.
The highlight of it all is new abilities like Ascend. They are explicitly integrated as a way to solve environmental puzzles, almost even going as far as cheesing some Shrines to instantly complete them if you cleverly use this ability alongside similar tools like Recall.
1 Elden Ring
Breathtaking At Almost Every Corner
I know this seemed like the most obvious choice, but I just couldn’t pass up the moment when the whole world, including my friends and me, were discovering just how vast and rich the Lands Between were in Elden Ring.
The game’s hype train delivered tenfold more than anyone would’ve expected in terms of the world design. And the best part of it all was how there was an entire two-story underground map, similar in vein to Tears of the Kingdom.
But instead of something dark and grimy, a ton of players were greeted with surprise and the realization of the sheer volume that the game possessed. From emerging through that one elevator down to Siofra River or even that coffin ride to Deeproot Depths, you couldn’t help but feel a bit bewildered at the sight of the scale.
Combine that with some legacy dungeons like the entirety of Leyndell Royal Capital and other secrets to tackle like the mildly complex catacombs, and you have the exact ingredients for one of the most impressive video game open worlds with an articulate verticality at the core.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
