8 Best 7/10 Games Of All Time
The best not-great video games you'll ever play.
Though many gamers will try to tell you that a 7/10 game isn’t worth bothering with, that’s really not true at all.
Granted, this is really just a symptom of vast swaths of the games media being bafflingly allergic to using the full 1-10 scale to review video games. By basically any other critical standard - and especially the ones afforded to, say, movies - a 7/10 score indicates that a product is very good, if falling a little shy of the greatness indicated by an 8/10.
And honestly, “swimming in 7s” shouldn’t be a bad place for most games to land - it implies a general mechanical and aesthetic competence, even if the game isn’t doing anything truly groundbreaking. And that’s totally fine.
7/10 games generally deliver the solid goods and can serve as a refreshing palate cleanser between playing more “important” critical darlings. And with that in mind, these are the standout ones good enough to basically transcend their popular perception as “mid,” even if their not-great score was certainly well-earned.
So here’s to you, 7/10 games, for getting the job done even with all those rough edges…
8. Mad Max
Though it didn't impress Mad Max director George Miller, 2015's open-world Mad Max game from Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios is a freakin' blast - if you can accept that it isn't remotely reinventing the wheel.
Even though Mad Max's open world sandbox draws unashamedly from the Ubisoft playbook, it does ably capture the series' oppressive aesthetic and uniquely offbeat tone. The game clings eagerly to open-world formula with its map strewn with Things To Do, but benefits massively from slick driving mechanics and Batman: Arkham-inspired combat.
While it arguably ends up feeling a bit too repetitive for its own good, if you picked Mad Max up for a few bucks on sale, you'd probably wonder why it was received with such thunderous indifference a near-decade ago.
Mad Max is the poster child for games that eagerly crib from better ones, know their limitations, and deliver a bone-crunching good time all the same.