Paris, Rome, Fiji, the Taj Majal? Pshaw. Yeah, sure, the graphics are pretty good and the back stories are great, but the fees are huge and you can't save your game. Plus, they won't yet run on any gaming system you own. So instead, here are five virtual places you must visit before you die, and you don't even have to leave your house to do it.

Alpha Centauri
How to get there: play Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

This might seem like an odd choice for a list of the most vividly realized virtual worlds in videogaming. After all, SMAC is an almost ten-year-old turn-based strategy game played from a god's eye view. Well, satellite's eye view, at any rate.

The game plays like a science fiction version of the classic Civilization series, but carefully built around a whole new mythology. Here is the clash between the squabbling survivors of the Earth we know, struggling to get by in a strange new world. As the factions come to terms with each other, Planet (as it comes to be known) is very much a character in Its own right, growing and changing and interacting with the settlers. Whether It's revered, beaten back, or exploited for Its resources, there's a powerful message here about humanity and the environment.

If you're interested in strategy games, and if you can bear a somewhat older and clunkier interface, SMAC will transport you someplace you've never been in a way that's far more memorable than the typical flashy 3D engine. It's as richly written, compellingly told, and surprisingly relevant as any smart science fiction novel.

Damascus
How to get there: play Assassin's Creed

It's a shame that more games don't take advantage of that whole "history" thing. Ten thousand years of human civilization and the average videogame can't come up with anything other than a) a dungeon or b) a space station? Assassin's Creed isn't having any of that guff (never mind the silly sci-fi twist at the beginning). The setting is the Middle East in the year, uh, Eleventymumblemumble, where Ubisoft's fancy next-gen engine will transport you to…oh, wait, it's just a castle kind of thing (see letter "a" above). Big deal. But then you're put out on the open road and…oh, wait, it's just a bunch of canyons. Big deal.

But then you get to Damascus, and suddenly you're in an open city teeming with beggars, drunks, bystanders, priests, guards, Templars, and water carriers. It's alive with movement and sound. But the thing about this place is that your character can go virtually anywhere, down any alley, up to any rooftop, onto any dome, to the top of any minaret. This bustling medieval city is the first of many playgrounds for your lithe assassin. These cities are brought to life with stunning technology and a keen affection for ancient architecture. Assassin's Creed is the videogame equivalent of an expensive coffee table book about the ancient Middle East. But instead of reading it, you just Parkour the heck out of it.

Liberty City
How to get there: play Grand Theft Auto IV

True to the name of the game in which it's situated, Liberty City is built for driving. The traffic plays by the rules, which you can break or observe as you like (right on red is allowed, but don't forget that oncoming traffic has the right of way!). The driving model might be challenging, but it's far more rewarding than the average racing game, which means getting from point A to point B – and you'll be doing an awful lot of that – is considered "gameplay". A big part of why this works is all the stuff in between points A and B.

Liberty City isn't a literal presentation of New York City. The neighborhoods are tastefully stylized, amusingly renamed, and carefully compressed for maximum videogame friendliness. And then they're crammed with detail so that there's always something to see or hear. Whether you're reading the signs, admiring the carefully created buildings, or just listening to idle banter, Liberty City is as alive as any fake place has ever been.

You know how Woody Allen shoots movies in New York and manages to make it look its best? That's how Rockstar's artists have built Liberty City. Consider flames flickering from the smokestacks of Acter by night, or the people doing Tai Chi in Middle Park by day, the splashy colors in Star Junction or Chinatown coming alive during dusk, or the way the color leaches out of the air shortly before it rains. Consider the dumpy neighborhood in BOABO or the upscale houses in Willis or the quaint Leftwood shops on the way to the mansions of Westdyke. Consider the lights on the Broker Bridge, the looming rollercoaster on Firefly Island, and the tall silent Statue of Happiness out in the harbor. Liberty City isn't just a mere spectacle. It's far more than that. It's the single best recreation of a modern city in any videogame, and it's a love letter to New York.

Rapture
How to get there: play BioShock

Underwater cities are nothing new. Heck, the recent Timesplitters: Future Perfect wound up in a Jules Verne inspired underwater city. This might have lead to cries of "BioShock ripped off Timesplitters!", if only more people had played Timesplitters.

But what's new and memorable in Irrational Studio's brilliant adventure is the way the place – it's deep sea setting, its architecture, its baronies and fiefdoms of competing philosophies – tells the story of memorable characters like Andrew Ryan, "Atlas", McDonogh, and Tenenbaum. The presence of these people echoes throughout the stately arches and buttresses of Rapture in a way that no other videogame has achieved.

BioShock might be a conventionally scripted first person shooter, guiding you through its dark flooding hallways, but down here is an ecology unlike anything you've ever seen. Plaintive groaning Big Daddies, Little Sisters cheerfully sucking the blood from corpses, ravening heavily armed splicers lurking in the shadows, and a rogue's gallery of villains holed up in a crumbling soggy utopia. And the ultimate beauty of BioShock isn't that it's just a strange world, but that it's a place to which you come home.

The Shire
How to get there: play Lord of the Rings Online

Of all the playable races in Lord of the Rings Online, hobbits get the best deal. They start out in the Shire, which isn't just a beautiful place. It's unlike any other part of this online Middle Earth, brimming with quests concerning hobbits: pie delivery, gossip, bounders, wayward chickens, birthday parties, pipeweed farming. There's nary an orc to be slain in this halfling idyll, which serves as a staging area for adventurous hobbits on their way out into the wider world.

Lord of the Rings Online was one of the first and best MMOs to really take advantage of a latest-gen graphics engine to draw detailed scenery visible out to long ranges. The Shire is a great showcase for what you'll see in this game. From the wide lazy Brandywine to the mildly menacing Rushock Bog, from the sun-dappled Bindbole Woods in the north to the hedge holding back the looming Old Forest in the south, The Shire is a loving realization of J.R.R. Tolkien's fiction. And if you want to find your way around, you don't necessarily need to press 'M' to call up your map screen. Just open a copy of Lord of the Rings and use the maps Tolkien himself drew.