Games Like The Last of Us on PS5 & PS4 (2026)

Why it's here: Start here if what you want back is the bond. Amicia drags her plague-stricken little brother Hugo across a collapsing medieval France, and the protection is mechanical as well as emotional: she is fragile, he is vulnerable, and the sling and the shadows are most of your options. The recurring frustration in Steam reviews is that the sequel pushes you into open combat where the first game rewarded slipping past. Rated Mature 17+, not on PS Plus, 4.57 from 27,311 ratings. Of everything here, this is the one to play first.

Why it's here: Gives you the infected world at scale, and takes the companion away. Deacon St. John rides alone through an Oregon where Freakers move in hundreds, so the tension shifts from a room you clear carefully to a horde you outrun on a bike you have to keep fuelled. Steam reviews return repeatedly to repetitive mission structure through the long middle stretch. Rated Mature, not on PS Plus, 4.66 from 173,215 ratings. Worth it for the scale, as long as you know the relationship at the centre of TLOU is not part of the deal.

Why it's here: The surrogate-father story that got there first, a year before Joel and Ellie. Lee Everett, a convicted man walking a girl named Clementine through a collapsing Georgia, is the template rather than the imitation, and with almost no combat the relationship carries everything. The disappointment that recurs in Steam reviews is that the choices bend the telling without changing the destination. Rated Mature, not on PS Plus, 4.85 from 15,314 ratings, the highest rating on this list drawn from much the smallest sample of any pick. Play it for Clementine.

Why it's here: Scarcity here is a system rather than a mood: ammunition doubles as currency, filters tick down, and your rifle jams if you never clean it. Artyom crosses a post-nuclear Russia with a crew who talk between the fights. The complaint that dominates Steam reviews comes from series veterans, who say the open sandboxes lost the oppressive closeness the tunnels had. Rated Mature, not on PS Plus, 4.54 from 60,903 ratings, the lowest-rated pick here. Take it for the resource pressure; the characters are not the draw.

Why it's here: Inverts the thing Naughty Dog made look effortless. Where TLOU moves you through its ruins with athletic ease, Sam Porter Bridges makes every slope and river crossing a negotiation with the weight on his back, reconnecting a broken America one delivery at a time. The verdict that recurs in Steam reviews is blunt: a good number of players simply find the walking tedious, and that reaction rarely softens with hours. Rated Mature 17+, not on PS Plus, 4.61 from 90,519 ratings. Right pick if the journey stayed with you longer than the infected did.

Why it's here: This one keeps TLOU's bullet economy and drops everything human about it. Leon and Claire work through a Raccoon City police station built as a single interlocking puzzle, counting handgun rounds while an unkillable Tyrant reroutes every plan. What Steam reviewers note missing is the character work: the cast is thin and the interactions few, so nobody becomes your Ellie. Rated Mature, not on PS Plus, 4.77 from 114,401 ratings. Go in for the tension, not for the company.

Why it's here: The escort premise TLOU built an entire emotional arc on, played as action. Leon walks Ashley out of a village that wants them both, and the remake turns her from the burden the 2005 original made her into a companion you position and command. She still does not carry a relationship the way Ellie does, and Steam reviews keep catching on her AI at the worst moments. Rated Mature, not on PS Plus, 4.74 from 144,667 ratings. The one to reach for when you want the escort structure loud and fast.

Why it's here: A read-alike for the world, not for the bond, because Aloy travels alone. What it shares with TLOU is the archaeology: a ruined civilisation you reconstruct from the recordings it left behind, and the collapse it uncovers is stranger and sadder than the hunting laid over it. The recurring complaint in Steam reviews is that fights against humans never approach the machine ones for tension. Rated Teen and on PS Plus Extra, one of four picks here a subscription covers, 4.75 from 210,423 ratings. Play it for the collapse it uncovers.

Why it's here: The Joel half of the bond, written from inside the father. Kratos walks his son Atreus across a Norse wilderness, and Santa Monica built the boy so he would never be a burden, a decision the studio has said it made with TLOU in mind. Where Steam reviews converge is enemy variety, the same trolls and the same Baldur fight recurring until it becomes a running joke. Rated Mature, on PS Plus Extra, 4.75 from 301,055 ratings, the most-rated of the four picks a subscription covers here. The father and son are the reason to play it.

Why it's here: Same studio, same craft, none of the despair. Naughty Dog built the cinematic vocabulary here first, and both games in the collection run on two-handers, Nathan with his brother and Chloe with Nadine, carried by performance and writing rather than by scarcity. Steam reviews describe the shooting itself as dated, a cover-based loop the set pieces around it have outgrown. Rated Teen, on PS Plus Extra, 4.75 from 236,048 ratings. The pick for a week when you want the polish and the pacing without the grief.

Why it's here: Furthest from TLOU in setting, closest in what it does to its lead. Jin Sakai saves Tsushima by becoming the thing his own code forbids, a moral cost pitched in the same register as Joel's ending, and it beat The Last of Us Part II to the fan-voted prize in 2020. Steam reviewers and critics alike flag the repetition, side content and enemy types that thin out before the map does. Rated Mature 17+, not on PS Plus, 4.60 from 314,294 ratings, the most-rated pick here and one of the lower-rated. Play it for what the war costs Jin.

Why it's here: For anyone who finished TLOU wanting the ending to have been theirs to decide. Three androids in a near-future Detroit run stories that genuinely fork, and a lead can die permanently halfway through, with everything afterwards rearranging around the loss. The complaint that persists in Steam reviews is the quick-time events, which carry more of the game than most players think they should. Rated Mature, on PS Plus Extra, 4.73 from 172,174 ratings. Choose it if the fixed ending is the thing you kept arguing about.

Why it's here: The mood of TLOU's quiet stretches, made into a whole game. You are a cat in a sealed neon city where the humans are long gone and only robots remember them, and the environmental storytelling does what those abandoned rooms do between the fights. Length is the reservation that recurs in Steam reviews, the story running about five hours, though those threads are mostly players defending it. Rated Everyone 10+, the only pick below a Teen rating, not on PS Plus, 4.71 from 74,165 ratings. An evening, and the one game here you could hand to a child.