In praise of the 7/10

I like bad games. They can often be more interesting than the current standard of highly polished, triple-A titles that adorn our PlayStation’s and Xbox’s hard drives. This is partially because more often than not their supposed “badness” isn’t because they are badly designed, but because they didn’t come together in the way they perhaps deserved to. You can call me contrarian if you want, but that’s not what I’m trying to be. It’s more that I want to allow more time for games to breathe than I think they’re sometimes afforded.

Forspoken is the most recent example of a “bad game” that I think I probably brushed off too quickly, despite there potentially being some worth in what it’s doing. Henry’s excellent review concluded that the game is “hard to universally recommend” due to its ups and downs, though he did also believe that its worldbuilding and combat meant it’s still worth looking at. I haven’t played the game myself, only some of the demo which didn’t enthuse me, but Henry’s review did.

I’m not here to defend Forspoken, I think a lot of the criticism of this game is absolutely well placed, particularly to do with the fact it has a Black protagonist but doesn’t engage with what that means. I am here to defend the kind of game Forspoken is though, which teeters on that dangerous edge that is the 7/10 game.

Eurogamer doesn’t offer scores in its reviews, which I wholly appreciate, but it is still generally the universally accepted method of surmising reviews, despite it obviously leading to people only looking at the score and not much more than that (we all do it, myself included). But a game being a 7/10 or below generally begets a reaction of “so it’s bad then?”