Architecture in Games

Every game has some type of architecture in it, 2D or 3D.  Architecture helps draw the player in with creations to the environment, without architecture inside a game landscape the environment would be flat and have no value, giving the player no sense of engagement.  Having an environment and a surrounding in a set style of architecture have a large role in the games's visual production, some work if they can use a variety of styles, some don't.  What makes the games narrative is the attention to detail on these pieces.  
Here are a few examples:

Sleeping Dogs:

Sleeping Dogs is one of my favourite games to play, I love how they where able to create such an amazingly good representation of Hong Kong, this was able to help me become more engaged with the situation and really feel what's happening with the characters.  I believe what really makes it stand out are the amount of weather affects which I'm guessing are done through gloss and specular maps.  This really makes it so everything stands out and seems interesting to engage with.

The Last of Us:

Probably the best game of the decade, The Last of Us brings incredible environmental artwork in a Post Apocalyptic world, that has been taken from real life locations and been taken over by mother nature.  From this piece I can look at how mother nature has taken over and examine how to implement it into my folly to give it history.

Assassins Creed 2:

The Assassins Creed games goes over a massive amount of time in history, using a range of architecture styles, however the second game has some of the strongest architecture visuals among the rest. The architecture is very realistic, it takes this approach to show the time period successfully.  The size and scale of the buildings will determine how much detail goes into each area, but Ubisoft are able to make every part of the environment look extremely realistic by using real world colour palettes and placing very believable lighting.