I haven't played The Last Of Us but Mark Bussler of CGR compared Enslaved to it, which I also haven't played because I don't have a PS3, so might be worth a shot.

It's a game I have thought of already. I once played the demo and was pretty impressed and thought that it might interesting for my GF. It would be quite a risky experiment, though, :D

I've been interested in it myself. I guess I'll rather get if for myself than for her. :D

Already have all of them myself (Darksiders and Bioshock for PC, though). I think Ico and SotC aren't quite her kind of thing but now that you mention it, Darksiders and Bioshock might both be interesting choices. I wouldn't feel like gifting those to her since I already own them in some way but they might still be interesting suggestions.

Indeed. Interesting suggestion but sadly the lack of a retail release disqualifies it from being a decent gift.
I'm too much of a Silent Hill fanboy myself (and she knows it). I think she would feel weird getting either SH game as a gift from me. :D

A game like The Last of Us? Enslaved Odyssey to the West comes to mind. Trailer

Already have it on PS3... and funnily enough TLoU also reminded me a bit of Enslaved. I also thought that it might be a decent suggestion for her (especially since she also had fun playing the previous game by the same devs, Heavenly Sword) but as I said - it's disqualified since I already have it. Oh, and I haven't beaten it myself because the PS3 version is terrible (awful optimization - frequent and sometimes serious framedrops, there's actually even cutscenes where audio and video will always be out of sync).

Btw, Enslaved was recently released in an improved version for PC. Available on Steam. :)
See above. :D

I would first like to say that I can understand that some people don't consider games like The Last of Us to be good specially folks who are into RPGs and open world games, but I really consider strong story and narrative to be a major factor for the games that I enjoy the most even when the gameplay isn't really ground breaking so in my opinion it definitely deserves the praise it gets.

I also agree that the Walking Dead would be a good choice because of its heart wrenching story and the zombies ofcourse. Also if your girlfriend plays survival horror games like the original Resident Evil Trilogy then she may have played these games as well but on the off chance she hasn't then I would recommend the Silent Hill HD Collection on PS3 as they are two of the best of the series and really creepy horror games though personally the first Silent Hill is still my favorite. :)

Also the new Tomb Raider is actually a pretty good game with some horrific moments although more inspired by the Uncharted series then survival horror games like The Last of Us. Also someone mentioned Beyond Two Souls which I haven't played but the game Heavy Rain by the same person David Cage is really great but it is more of a thriller like the David Fincher movie "Seven" instead of horror yet its got a great story and multiple endings based on how many characters you manage to keep alive. Lastly give Uncharted 2 a chance even if you didn't like Uncharted 1 as it is one of the best action/adventure games IMO. :)

EDIT: Didn't see that I was ninja'd by XYCat with Silent Hill. :P

There's a PC version of Enslaved, too, although I don't know how good the port is and AFAIK it's only on Steam.

EDIT: Whoops, nevermind, I see F4LLOUT already mentioned it.

Spec Ops : The Line - No zombies, but it has everything else .

The HD remake sucks, though.

My bad! I shall be more observant next time.

Every time I hear/read about this game I wonder how come I haven't played it yet! Somehow I always forget about it, I'm going to write it down right now!

It's very hard to find something like The Last of Us. I think Dead Space is the closest one, but the narrative is not even close to being as good.

Where did you take that from? That's not true at all. People praised it because it's a good survival horror with a very strong narrative that doesn't fall into the usual "good vs evil" cliche, not because of Ellie. I haven't read any review saying that they are giving the game a high score because of Ellie. Oh, c'mon, enough with the elitism. It has nothing to do with "new generation of gamers". I am a huge fan of old-school survival horror games and i enjoyed The Last of Us a lot. All the Resident Evil/Silent Hill fans i know also enjoyed it. The game deserved the praise it received for reviving a genre that was dying in the AAA scene.

I haven't played it, but I've heard Heavy Rain hits on a lot of your criteria.

That looks like an awesome game :-)

Alone in the Dark Inferno. It's got satanic monsters instead of zombies, but it's somewhat heavy in plot (which is presented in episodes) and not too hardcore. It's got a DVD playback mechanic where you can skip segments if they're too tough, or even replay your favorite ones. It's a third person/first-person driving, puzzle, shooty game. I personally really really like it, but a lot of people don't. So watch a let's play or something before you decide to get it for your girlfriend. Ignore most (but not all) complaints about bugs or glitches, because the Inferno edition (available on PS3) actually addresses most of them.

EDIT: The game doesn't ask too much out of it's gamers. Although your aim has to be a little good to take out the monsters. But other than that, the most there is to the game is that you have a limited inventory, you can combine items (bottle of oil + rag = molotov, easy peasy) and every once in a while you have to solve puzzles. But if she gets too frustrated with that or the combat, she can always just skip it :)