If this feature was one of the main draws for you when it came to The Last of Us, then look no further than State of Decay’s second installment, where players are regularly encouraged to make scavenging a priority and where the third-person POV gameplay that was utilized in The Last of Us is at the forefront. After all, when we strip it back, at its core it is a zombie survival game, one which has a particular focus on the importance of making players really think about their approach to dispatching the infected and making every bullet count. There are plenty of aspects that make The Last of Us brilliant which don’t necessarily center around narrative and character development. Go on, bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt! State of Decay 2 Couple that with the engaging combat of a Bioshock game and you’re onto a winner. It’s a bit more eccentric than The Last of Us’s grounded, harsh world but is still totally worth it for the twists and turns of the gripping story. Ken Levine’s assessment of American society in Columbia is still fascinating to this day, and the well-paced story will keep you on your toes indefinitely. Again, the protagonist is played by Troy Baker (Joel in The Last of Us) and follows his attempts to rescue a younger woman with world-bending powers from a Utopia grounded in American exceptionalism.
Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC, Nintendo SwitchĪnother narrative behemoth that preceded The Last of Us by a few months in 2013, Irrational’s Bioshock Infinite is an ambitious game within an already genre-defining series, an atmospheric, imagination-stoking story with an inspired Steampunk aesthetic.
If you’re ready for another cinematic gaming experience, plug into Beyond: Two Souls and lose yourself in both the physical world and the spiritual one.
Beyond: Two Souls revolves around the psychic link between two entities - one in corporeal form and one bodiless - and offers a complex and richly built environment for players to control either of the eponymous two souls, as they work their way through a winding story that involves the CIA, an ethereal realm and, like The Last of Us, more than a fair share of family tragedy. Released in the same year as The Last of Us, this epic dive into the supernatural boasts some top-tier acting chops from Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page in a story of adolescence and adulthood tied into a paranormal world. If your favorite aspect of The Last of Us was the immense detail of its storytelling and the impassioned voice acting that came together with motion capture performances to create an unforgettable narrative, then Beyond: Two Souls is sure to go down a storm.