Even out of 2013 I had much more fun in Saints Row IV and found a much more interesting narrative in Bioshock: Infinite.

Comparing SR4's "fun" with TLoU's "fun" is an odd choice. I feel like we as gamers need to compare titles within the genre, not the medium, as movies are. You wouldn't compare Forest Gump to Schneider's List in terms of "entertainment". Both are "entertaining" and well done in their own rights but of different enough genres that any comparison is misplaced.

While you finding Bioshock Infinite much more interesting is completely understandable, I'd argue that it's narrative dissonance in comparison to a game like TLoU (where all the violence and actions performed by the player throughout the game are 100% in-line with the narrative) would make TLoU a better example of storytelling done well in the medium of video games.

The rest of your argument seems to be under the basis that one form of storytelling is better than the other (mainly characterization is more important than lore/world building), which I'd argue is entirely up to the genre of game and the type of narrative the developers have set out to tell. There isn't a one glove fits all way of spinning a story. Really you're just arguing for your preferred way of storytelling instead of good storytelling in general, of which there are many ways. For example, in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth the setting and world lore is key, even over the characters. Yes there are interesting characters but the story being told is about the world and its history, not what's going on in the psyche of the characters. There are countless other examples of well regarded stories that prioritize the world over the characters.

Although that doesn't stop me from saying that a zombie apocalypse setting is such a dead horse that even its grand-colts were miscarried.

Then you'd missing the point of TLoU. The zombie apocalypse is a back drop to the larger story being told and with minor tweaks to the story, could be changed to numerous different settings without taking away the impact of the overall narrative. This is mainly because of strong characterization, which is funny.