The game
Today saw the release of the next chapter in the Far Cry video game series. This time, the crew at Ubisoft Montreal teleport gamers 12,000 years into the past to Mesolithic Central Europe (i.e. the Stone Age).
The newest feature of this game, besides the ancient setting, is the ability to tame a variety of animals to assist in your conquest.
But does changing the setting and adding a few new features make this new adventure worth buying?
We used our media monitoring and analysis software to analyze all Far Cry: Primal review-related Twitter content (over 5k tweets) leading up to the game’s release today, up to and including tweets on the eve of the game’s release. The majority of content came from some of the top review websites, with the most popular reviews being:
The reviews
Many reviews leaned in a positive direction, but also expressed certain reservations. IGN’s review noted that while the game successfully transports the Far Cry saga back in time, its issues (story, villain development, forgettable quests) make it sometimes feel like a “step back” from its predecessors.
CNET’s review acknowledges the same concerns as IGN (story & sometimes boring quests), but its review tagline of the game “successfully creating a sense of desperation” earned 361 Twitter hits alone. Along this same line, TIME’s review received 217 hits from its tagline about the game turning you into a “Superhero Caveman”.
The verdict
Overall, review sentiment toward the game on Twitter was decidedly positive:
At nearly 70 per cent positive and around 10 per cent negative, sentiment analysis of Far Cry Primal Twitter reviews leans towards a final rating of around 7/10, lining it up with critic and user reviews on Metacritic, which (so far) gives it a user rating of 7.5.
Forbes’ review of reviews, mentioned 91 times on Twitter, concluded that the game was “fun but not essential.”
And while not cracking the top five mentioned reviews, Mashable’s review link was also mentioned several times. Its review wasn’t nearly as positive, though, referring to the new entry as “clunky” and noting that the new world “feels like wallpaper.”
While many reviewers commented on the overall strong look and feel of the game, much negative commentary specifically cited graphics concerning the game’s many waterfalls. This was picked up on by several Twitter users, with one tweet being retweeted over 1.4k times (eclipsing the numbers for all major review links):
Far Cry Primal with the best waterfall tech to date pic.twitter.com/C8aD1AwcLR
— Nibel (@Nibellion) February 22, 2016
So while there seems to be a broad Twitter consensus that Far Cry:Primal may not live up to some of the previous entries in the franchise, the verdict is that Far Cry: Primal is still a satisfying experience for both newbies and veterans of the franchise.
