The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

This isn't just a game but a masterpiece—a very large sandbox game that rejects the quality-quantity inverse-proportionality. By genre a role-playing game, TES: Skyrim combines some of the best elements of older titles in the franchise with some new sandbox elements to churn out an extremely engaging and addictive game. It makes use of Bethesda's Creation Engine, which isn't visually-intensive in that it doesn't use taxing graphics features, but the game's presentation itself, with large, open worlds, ends up taxing your hardware. Faster GPUs result in smoother gameplay with most eye candy turned on.