Tuesday saw the release of the final chapter of the Nathan Drake saga in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. This time our story finds him retired and living in New Orleans with journalist Elena Fisher, three years after the events of Uncharted 3.
All is calm until his long-lost older brother Sam returns. After that, Drake is back in action in the search for the long-lost treasure of Pirate Captain Henry Avery.
And while studio Naughty Dog has another hit on its hands according to review aggregator Metacritic, how has the game fared in the Twittersphere?
We used our media monitoring and analysis software to analyze all Uncharted 4 review-related Twitter content (nearly 20k tweets) leading up to the game’s release on May 10, up to and including tweets on the eve of the game’s release.
The majority of Twitter content was driven by top review websites, with many users including links to various reviews in their tweets.
Almost all reviews were positive, with GameSpot giving the game a perfect score and referring to it as a “breathtaking marvel of a game.” It also noted that Naughty Dog’s latest entry in the series is “something for other (video games) to aspire to,” and that we will be talking about this game “for years to come.”
Robin Gaming and IGN’s reviews also acknowledged the game-changing (pardon the pun) nature of the release, with one calling it “one to remember.”
Videogamer’s review called the game “a strong end” to the series, but criticized “too many pace-sagging artificial roadblocks to progress.”
However, the backlash to this review on social media was so strong that the site actually posted an “apology” a little while later, adding somewhat cheekily that the reviewer “having opinions and thoughts on the game he played for tens of hours was wrong, ethically and morally.”
The verdict
Overall, sentiment toward the game on Twitter was overwhelmingly positive:
The praise on Twitter for the game was almost universal, with 5.5k tweets using the term “best”, almost 6k referring to it as “epic”, and around 700 labelling it a “masterpiece”.
The multiplayer aspect of the game was raised by almost all reviews as a weaker aspect of the game, with a few outright tweets noting this as a downside:
To my fellow friends about to start #Uncharted4 put on headsets and just dive straight into that multiplayer…..
NO! Don’t do that!
— Infinity Games (@infinitygames16) May 10, 2016
Uncharted 4 review: Indiana Jones with bellends and a rubbish multiplayer 10/10
— VIOLENCE KILLER (@creedfangirl) May 5, 2016
Yahoo and Forbes’ reviews, while not cracking the top five, were also mentioned several times with Yahoo referring to the game as a “swashbuckling masterpiece.” Forbes, like the other major reviewers, praised the overall game as “drop-dead gorgeous”, but noted that some aspects were “repetitive”, with the reviewer lamenting all the climbing in-game sequences with the phrase “Oh god, the climbing.”
So even though this iteration of Uncharted will likely be Nathan Drake’s curtain call, it appears that Naughty Dog did right by our fearless explorer by delivering what may be the best entry in the series.
