Joel Miller didn’t just change the way we look at digital fatherhood; he changed the way we look at the third-person action game. It’s a heavy burden. Now, every time a developer puts a beard on a guy and sticks a child in his care, everyone screams about Naughty Dog’s influence. But finding games like The Last of Us isn't actually about finding a carbon copy of a cross-country road trip through a fungal apocalypse. It’s deeper. It’s about that specific, suffocating tension where you have three bullets and four enemies, and the person you’re protecting is the only reason your heart is still beating.
Honestly, most recommendations you see online are pretty lazy. People will point at any post-apocalyptic title and say, "There you go, it's the same thing." It's not. If the combat feels like a power fantasy, it isn’t like The Last of Us. If the characters are cardboard cutouts meant to move the plot from point A to point B without making you feel like your soul is being shredded, it isn’t it. You’re looking for weight. Physicality. You want to feel the rust on the pipe and the desperation in the character's breathing.
The Misconception of "Similar"
The mistake is focusing on the zombies. Or the Cordyceps. Whatever you want to call the monsters. In Naughty Dog's masterpiece, the monsters are just the landscape. They’re the weather. The real meat is the "ludo-narrative harmony," a fancy term developers like Neil Druckmann use to describe when the gameplay actually matches the story. If Joel is tired in a cutscene, he should feel heavy when you’re controlling him.
When searching for games like The Last of Us, you have to look for titles that respect the player's intelligence enough to let things be quiet. Quiet is where the dread lives. It’s the silence between the gunshots that defines the experience.
Days Gone and the Trap of Open-World Fatigue
A lot of people dismissed Days Gone when it launched in 2019. It was buggy. The protagonist, Deacon St. John, felt like a generic biker trope at first glance. But if you stick with it, you realize it’s one of the few games that actually captures the sheer terror of being outnumbered.
Think about the "Hordes."
In The Last of Us, you usually fight three or four Clickers at a time. In Days Gone, you might stumble upon five hundred Freakers pouring out of a cave like a literal wave of flesh. It’s a different scale of anxiety. While the writing might not hit those heights of Shakespearean tragedy found in Part II, the core loop of scavenging for scrap to keep your bike running feels remarkably familiar. You’re always one empty gas tank away from a very lonely, very violent death.
The relationship between Deacon and Sarah—or even Deacon and Boozer—is the glue. It lacks the "prestige TV" sheen of Naughty Dog, but it has a blue-collar sincerity that hits home. If you want a game that makes the apocalypse feel like a long, exhausting job where the pay is just living another twenty-four hours, this is the one.
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The God of War Comparison
Then there’s the 2018 reboot of God of War and its sequel, Ragnarök. Everyone calls it "The Last of Us with an axe."
Is that fair?
Kinda. Cory Barlog, the creative director, has been open about how much the industry shifted after Joel and Ellie’s debut. You see it in the camera angle. It’s tight. It’s over-the-shoulder. It forces you to see the world from Kratos’s perspective, making the combat feel intimate and brutal rather than the floaty, arcade-style spectacle of the older Greek-era games.
But it’s the relationship between Kratos and Atreus that really bridges the gap. You aren't just protecting a kid; you're teaching a kid. The gameplay reflects this. Atreus grows from a distraction into a vital combat asset, echoing the way Ellie transitions from a "hidden" NPC to a lethal partner. It’s a masterclass in using mechanics to show character growth. If you loved the "dad-ification" of gaming, this is your next stop.
A Plague Tale: The Emotional Heavyweight
If you really want to talk about games like The Last of Us, you have to talk about A Plague Tale: Innocence and its sequel, Requiem. Asobo Studio, a relatively small team in France, did something that most AAA studios fail to do: they made me care about a sibling bond as much as I cared about Joel and Ellie.
Set during the Black Death in 14th-century France, you play as Amicia de Rune, a noble girl forced to protect her younger brother, Hugo. It’s brutal. The rats are a literal ocean of plague that will devour you in seconds if you step out of the light.
- Stealth is mandatory. You are a child with a sling. You cannot go toe-to-toe with armored Inquisition knights.
- Resource management is tight. Just like crafting shivs, you’re constantly crafting alchemical mixtures to stay alive.
- The moral decay. This is the big one. In the second game, you watch Amicia slowly lose her mind to the violence. It mirrors Ellie’s descent in The Last of Us Part II in a way that is genuinely uncomfortable to watch.
The voice acting by Charlotte McBurney as Amicia is world-class. She captures that specific kind of cracking-voice desperation that defines the genre. It’s a harrowing experience, and honestly, Requiem might be even more depressing than Naughty Dog’s work. You’ve been warned.
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The Indie Perspective: Signalis
Let’s get weird for a second. Most people looking for games like The Last of Us want high-end graphics and cinematic cutscenes. But if what you’re actually craving is the "Survival" part of survival horror, you need to play Signalis.
It’s a top-down, lo-fi aesthetic game that feels like a fever dream of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. But the reason it fits this list is the inventory management. It is punishing. You have six slots. That’s it. You have to decide if you want a gun, ammo, a key, a healing item, or a flashlight. Every trip into the dark is a calculated risk. It captures that feeling of "I don't have enough stuff to survive this" better than almost any big-budget game on the market.
It’s also deeply melancholy. The story is told through environmental cues and cryptic notes, much like the Ish subplot in the Pittsburgh sewers. It respects your ability to piece things together.
Why The Last of Us (Part I and II) Stays the Gold Standard
We should probably be honest about why we keep looking for these games. It’s because the "Naughty Dog formula" is incredibly hard to replicate. You can have the best graphics in the world, but if the animation doesn't have that specific "weight," it feels like a video game. The Last of Us feels like a documentary of a world that doesn't exist.
Look at the AI. In the Part I remake and Part II, the enemies call each other by name. They scream when they find a friend's body. That’s not just a cool feature; it’s a psychological trick to make the player feel like a monster. Very few developers are willing to go that far. Red Dead Redemption 2 does it to some extent with its hyper-realism, but the pacing is so slow it might put some action fans to sleep.
Metro Exodus: The Russian Soul
If you want the grit, you go to Metro Exodus.
Based on Dmitry Glukhovsky’s novels, the Metro series—specifically Exodus—takes the survival mechanics of the previous games and moves them into a semi-open world. You’re on a train, the Aurora, traveling across a devastated Russia.
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The weapon customization is the star here. You are literally pulling parts off old guns to fix your own. Your gas mask can crack. You have to manually wipe the blood and dirt off your visor. It’s immersive in a way that makes the "gamey" elements of other titles feel thin. The relationship between Artyom and his wife, Anna, provides that emotional anchor. When things go wrong, and they will, you feel the weight of the entire crew on your shoulders.
What to Play Based on Your Favorite Part of TLOU
Everyone likes the game for different reasons. Let’s break it down by what specifically scratched that itch for you.
- If you liked the stealth and "the hunt": Play Dishonored. While it’s first-person and steampunk, the level of agency you have in how you tackle an environment is very similar to the "wide-linear" encounters in The Last of Us Part II.
- If you liked the "Dad" energy: Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season One. Lee and Clementine are the spiritual predecessors to Joel and Ellie. The graphics are dated, but the ending will wreck you just as hard.
- If you liked the environmental storytelling: Bioshock: Collection. Rapture is a city that tells its story through trash on the floor and blood on the walls. It’s the gold standard for show-don’t-tell.
- If you liked the brutal combat: Ghost of Tsushima. While it’s a samurai game, the "Lethal" difficulty setting makes every sword swing feel final. You have to be precise, or you die. Just like a Clicker encounter.
The Verdict on Survival Narrative
The search for games like The Last of Us usually ends when the player realizes they aren't looking for a genre, but a feeling. That feeling of being small in a world that is very large and very hungry.
Whether it's the 14th-century plague pits of France or the cold, metallic corridors of a sci-fi facility, the common thread is vulnerability. If you feel too powerful, the magic is gone. The best games in this category are the ones that make you feel like you're barely holding it together with some duct tape and a dream.
Actionable Next Steps
To get the most out of your next playthrough, try these specific adjustments:
- Turn off the HUD. Most of these games, including A Plague Tale and Metro Exodus, allow you to turn off the UI. This forces you to look at the world, not the mini-map.
- Play on a higher difficulty. The "survival" part of survival horror only works if you're actually afraid of dying. "Normal" mode often gives you too much ammo, which kills the tension.
- Invest in a good pair of headphones. Sound design is 50% of the atmosphere in these titles. Hearing a stalker move behind a wall is much more effective than seeing a red dot on a radar.
- Slow down. Don't sprint to the next objective marker. Read the notes. Look at the way a room is staged. The story is usually written on the walls.
If you’ve already cleared your backlog and you’re still waiting for The Last of Us Part III or a new IP from Naughty Dog, start with A Plague Tale: Requiem. It is the closest you will get to that specific brand of emotional devastation and polished stealth. Just make sure you have some tissues nearby. You’ll need them.