I enjoyed TLOU2's "so so average gameplay" and its "awful story".

But yeah, we all have opinions. Your thread is about games that were graphically well ahead of their time. TLOU2 is that indeed.

you are deluded. death stranding is one of the best games i have ever played, and my second ps4 platinum. Infact i'd call it more than game, but a journey. Since the level of immersion goes beyond gaming.  The gameplay mechanics are fresh and unique, and so well controlled,  and the game only got better and expanded upon the further you progressed. Just a shame people gave up before the game got interesting and joined the "walking simulator" bandwagon.  As for tlou2, you also missed the point of the story. Then again the game was written by someone who wrote for the show westworld, and not many people could keep up with the complexity of that show, which includes you, to call the story. nd you call the gameplay average yet it has has the best Ai to date and the shooting/action is more visceral and done better than any other game. 

User was moderated for this post. ~ Pemalite.

Don’t know about the times, but personally I’d say artistically it’s one of the prettiest games ever made. And now 25 years later it still looks as good as it did back then.

And.

It has already been mentioned but I’d also like to mention Star Fox on SNES.

Metroid Prime was on par with Xbox games.

Resident Evil's Remake on GC still holds up even today.

God of War pushed the PS2 to a new level.

Ori and the Blind Forrest's use of a 3D space utilized as 2D layers allowed them to create one of the most timeless 2D visuals of any game.

TLOU Story is easy to comprehend. It's a rather old concept as well. Opinions are a thing. It's not a delusion. Just not everyone is as enamored as you and that's ok. Hey, I remember Yul Brynner in Westworld in the 1970s as well! First film to use CGI btw. Btw James Gunn wrote Scooby-Doo live-action films. Still sucked. Kojima's best stories came when he did point and click games on Policenauts and Snatcher and even then he was aping off existing films since he is such a film nut. His best playing game is Zone of the Enders 2. DS is just him just living off his ego at this point. The story is dumb as hell.

Anyway.  Back on topic.

Super Mario RPG looks like a 32 bit game

I agree. We just blind to it. In 1995, we were obsessed with the future. Games had to have that cgi DKC/Killer Instinct look or that had to have polygons like Tekken or Ridge Racer. Super Mario World 2 was doing amazing things in the 2D realm and was one of the absolute best games of all time, on top of that. I'd say it aged better than pretty much any game that came out that year in both graphics and gameplay. Especially that final boss fight!

Crysis 3 was also one of those games that basically a next gen game come early, on PC at least.

Metroid Prime looked amazing and well ahead of it's time. I'd also like to say Super Mario Sunshine was a beautiful game that looked way ahead of it's time, its textures, bright colors, and some of the water effects in Mario Sunshine looked graphically beautiful.

I also agree that naughty dog games on the PS3 such as Last of Us and Uncharted looked like PS4 games.

Donkey Kong Country on the SNES is an obvious inclusion, the 3D sprites made it look like a 5th Gen game that's comparable to PS1,N64,Saturn games, and looked better than MOST 32X games, which was a huge slap in the face to Sega at the time.

I also like to include Sonic Adventure as well, while yes it was technically on a 6th gen system, the game looks amazing for releasing in 1998 and blew away pretty much every game in terms of graphics that year, the high polygon count, textures, and more.

IMO as well, Red Dead redemption 2, that game just looks leaps ahead of most AAA games this gen imo, its graphical fidelity is amazing.

I would say GOW II

Gears of War ushered in the HD era for consoles

Gran Turismo 2 really raised the bar for driving sims of the era but visually was also impressive and set a bar for the series to follow ever since.