You’re looking for another one, right?
The Last of Us will be remembered as one of the greatest games in history, even though it was always mechanically flawed. It’s just a fact. Naughty Dog and Neil Druckmann created a setting and story that was so iconic that we still feel the impact today. Gamers never stopped debating whether Joel was right, and HBO’s The Last of Us had very impressive ratings.
But what should you play if you have already completed both parts of The Last of Us countless times? The question is very difficult, because different people like completely different things about it: some like Joel and Ellie’s story, some like the gameplay elements, and some like the tactical zombie setting and the feeling of the a world where you have to be afraid. of all and to live. We tried to find an alternative for The Last of Us to suit all tastes.
The Walking Dead (2012 – 2019)
Telltale’s video game adaptation of The Walking Dead isn’t just a game, strictly speaking. To a greater extent, this is a special interactive movie where you have to make choices and decide which character will live to see the next chapter, and who we will say goodbye to forever. As a rule, this played no important role and was a distraction, which is why many people do not like Telltale’s The Walking Dead. But! One element of it worked well.
During the zombie apocalypse, a man named Lee Everett takes responsibility for a little girl named Clementine, who does not know where her parents are. The Walking Dead (especially in the beginning) is their ride. All other characters, whether they are friends or enemies, just pass in the background, while the real drama unfolds around Lee’s father and Clementine’s daughter. Does nothing remind us? Of course, The Last of Us is stronger in terms of stories, but The Walking Dead has some powerful moments. Especially if you came specifically for the story.
Project Zomboid (2013)
A great zombie apocalypse survival simulator and one of the most advanced indie games in history. At first glance, Project Zomboid doesn’t look like The Last of Us at all. But! Mentally return to the world of Joel and Ellie so you can watch events from a great height. What is happening? People run around, trying to escape from zombies, meeting and losing each other.
This is exactly what happens in Project Zomboid. The world is doomed, but you can continue as long as your skills allow. Skilled players can literally go from finding rotten apples in someone’s kitchen to creating their own little settlement full of survivors that you meet in different situations. And if it works, this world will be more alive for you than The Last of Us.
Days Away (2019)
Right, this option may seem strange, but only at first glance. Yes, Days Gone is a game about biker Deacon who fights hordes of zombies, and, first of all, it is an action game. But have you even thought how many opponents Joel took on in the first part of The Last of Us? His frag counter is definitely lower than Deacon’s, but still very impressive. However, that’s not the only reason to try Days Gone after The Last of Us.
The second best thing about the game, after the zombie hordes (and they are well done), is the post-apocalyptic setting of Oregon. The Last of Us has become a cult because wherever we look, ultra-detailed images of American landscapes destroyed by cordyceps will catch our eye. Days Gone also runs well on this fuel. Not to mention, it’s just fun to play.
A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019) and A Plague Tale: Requiem (2022)
There are no zombies here, but there is a plague and the French Inquisition. Otherwise, both parts of A Plague Tale are very similar to The Last of Us in moments, including gameplay. We play as a girl named Amicia, who is trying to save herself and her little brother Hugo. But this is not a sweet story at all. Especially Requiem.
Like Ellie, Hugo is a special child. We won’t reveal the plot twist, but it’s even more special than you think. And the end of the story A Plague Tale: Requiem raises questions that are less complicated than what happened in The Last of Us. If the world of TLoU is for you, first of all, despair, terrible danger and evil people around, here you will find exactly what you like. But from a completely different angle.
Resident Evil 2 Remake (2019)
A remake of a classic of the genre and one of the best parts of Resident Evil. Nominally, a remake of the fourth part would suit us, because there the main character also protects a girl, but Resident Evil 4 is the game where Shinji Mikami went crazy and wrote a story rather funny. So no, we live in Resident Evil 2, where Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield try to survive among hordes of zombies.
It is interesting that all these structures of destruction in the first part of The Last of Us were reminiscent of individual elements of Resident Evil 2 even at the time of release, and the remake of Resident Evil 2 is already more reminiscent of The Last of Us, because you have to take visual references from the best. Both games seem to have borrowed from each other. Of course, The Last of Us seems more basic than any Resident Evil, but there are still a lot of common elements between them.
Death Row (2019)
Oddly enough, Hideo Kojima’s messenger simulator is one of the best substitutes for The Last of Us. Why? Because this is the only game that definitely fills in the gaps between individual events in the events of Joel and Ellie. How will people move in post-apocalypse conditions? What decisions need to be made? What specific distances are covered? This is all Death Stranding.
However, here you need to understand something important. Death Stranding is a game from Hideo Kojima, so the dialogue and interface will torture you more than any enemy in the game. But here’s what anyone tells you: the game really starts after ten hours, when it finally lets you go on your own journey and lets you go out freely, road construction and logistics.
Connecting the dots seems to be the most interesting part of Death Stranding. Much more interesting than the plot. There is a huge opportunity for decisions and a cool set of tools to independently understand how to navigate in a dangerous and abandoned world. But this is the part of The Last of Us that we all imagined, but could not experience in practice.
