The year in fancy graphics: 2014's most beautiful screenshots

2014 was a nice year for pretty games. The new consoles mean the homogenized cross-platform look has improved a lot, and when full attention is paid to the PC, we get fancier technology and unlimited resolutions to toy with. With a bit of effort, we can do some pretty mad stuff, like take 8K screenshots which, when downsampled, look brilliant.

To celebrate all these pixels, we've collected our favorite screenshots from our weekly Pixel Boost column—and taken some new ones—in this gallery of 2014's most graphics-ey games. Yes, some great looking games have been left out (there just isn't enough time in the year, is there?) but watch our Pixel Boost column throughout 2015 for more. Also note that the focus here is on games we can tinker with (high resolutions, HUD removal, free cameras), so while Transistor is beautiful, for instance, there's no particular value to our screenshots over any others.

I also encourage you to check out Dead End Thrills—a repository for gorgeous screens—and our own Andy Kelly's Other Places series, in which he composes striking video tours of beautiful game worlds.

Screenshot by James Snook | Game by Monolith | 7680x4320

As he usually does, James created a free camera mode with Cheat Engine. He took the screenshots with the built-in hudless screenshot capture.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab. Find more screenshots from Shadow of Mordor here.

Screenshot by James Snook | Game by Monolith | 7680x3586

As he usually does, James created a free camera mode with Cheat Engine. He took the screenshots with the built-in hudless screenshot capture.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab. Find more screenshots from Shadow of Mordor here.

Screenshot by Tyler Wilde | Game by Creative Assembly | 7680x4320

Resolution achieved by editing the engine config file to add arbitrary windowed resolutions, screenshot taken with MSI Afterburner. Because I had the updated version of Alien, this cheat table didn't work for HUD removal and free camera. To get rid of the health bar, I used the sloppy method: hit escape to enter the menu and grab the screen just after the HUD disappears.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab.

Screenshot by Tyler Wilde | Game by Creative Assembly | 7680x4320

Resolution achieved by editing the engine config file to add arbitrary windowed resolutions, screenshot taken with MSI Afterburner. Because I had the updated version of Alien, this cheat table didn't work for HUD removal and free camera. To get rid of the health bar, I used the sloppy method: hit escape to enter the menu and grab the screen just after the HUD disappears.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab.

Screenshot by Tyler Wilde | Game by Visual Concepts | 5120x2880

Resolution thanks to Nvidia's Dynamic Super Resolution, screenshot taken with MSI Afterburner. The built-in replay and free camera is finicky, but it was possible to get some nice screens of my Golden State Warriors anyway.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab.

Screenshot by: Tyler Wilde | Game by: Ubisoft Montreal | 5120x2880

Far Cry 4 easily accepts custom resolutions, and the built in camera (press Z) made it easy to get hudless screenshots. I also unpacked the game settings file (details in this thread), turned on God Mode, and told everything to ignore me. I messed with a few graphics defaults as well.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab.

Screenshot by: Tyler Wilde | Game by: Ubisoft Montreal | 5120x2880

Far Cry 4 easily accepts custom resolutions, and the built in camera (press Z) made it easy to get hudless screenshots. I also unpacked the game settings file (details in this thread), turned on God Mode, and told everything to ignore me. I messed with a few graphics defaults as well.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab.

Screenshot by: James Snook | Game by: CI Games, Deck 13 | 7680x4320

James made a Cheat Engine table and used SweetFX with SMAA injection. He removed the HUD by adding "gui_area_size = 2" to the game's settings file. More here.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab. Find more screenshots from Lords of the Fallen here.

Screenshot by: James Snook | Game by: CI Games, Deck 13 | 7680x3840

James made a Cheat Engine table and used SweetFX with SMAA injection. He removed the HUD by adding "gui_area_size = 2" to the game's settings file. More here.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab. Find more screenshots from Lords of the Fallen here.

Screenshot by James Snook | Game by The Astronauts | 7680x3241

James created a Cheat Engine table for the free camera, used SweetFX, and grabbed screens with MSI Afterburner. More here.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab. Find more screenshots from The Vanishing of Ethan Carter here.

Screenshot by James Snook | Game by The Astronauts | 7680x3241

James created a Cheat Engine table for the free camera, used SweetFX, and grabbed screens with MSI Afterburner. More here.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab. Find more screenshots from The Vanishing of Ethan Carter here.

Screenshot by Tyler Wilde | Game by Sledgehammer | 5120x2880

I upped the resolution with Nvidia's Dynamic Super Resolution and took the screenshot with MSI Afterburner. That's about it!

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab.

Screenshot by Tyler Wilde | Game by Frontier Developments | 7680x4320

This isn't a very exciting screenshot, but I just love the HUD design in Elite. Screenshot taken with the built-in high-res screenshot function, which is Alt-F10 in solo mode.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab.

Screenshot by James Snook | Game by BioWare | 5120x2560

James describes a few ways to downsample Dragon Age: Inquisition here, and used the Cinematic Tools to achieve a free camera.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab. Find more Dragon Age: Inquisition screenshots here.

Screenshot by James Snook | Game by BioWare | 5120x2560

James describes a few ways to downsample Dragon Age: Inquisition here, and used the Cinematic Tools to achieve a free camera.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab. Find more Dragon Age: Inquisition screenshots here.

Screenshot by James Snook | Game by Ubisoft Montreal | 5760x2880

James used Cheat Engine (grab the cheat table here) for the free camera and other tools, and SweetFX to grab the screens.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab. Find more Watch Dogs screenshots here.

Screenshot by James Snook | Game by Ubisoft Montreal | 5760x2880

James used Cheat Engine (grab the cheat table here) for the free camera and other tools, and SweetFX to grab the screens.

Click the icon in the upper-right corner of the image to enlarge, or open it in a new tab. Find more Watch Dogs screenshots here.