Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Machines have components you are meant to shoot off with the right element. A player who ignores that fights the same Thunderjaw for ten minutes with the wrong arrows.

Two games glued together, and the management half is where a run is actually lost — a starving flock undoes a perfectly good dungeon.

The build carries the game. A netrunner or a sandevistan trivialises fights that a scattered stat spread makes unwinnable, and the difficulty setting only changes the numbers underneath that.

Generous dodges and plug-in chips that can automate half the combat, so the demand is low until Very Hard, where one hit ends you and the chip build becomes the game.

Give Me God of War removes the stagger the whole combat loop leans on, and turns the optional Valkyries into the fights people put the controller down over.

The genre’s shape at a fraction of its hostility — and the only one on this shelf that ships with a menu that will hand you a gun and skip the fight.

A simulator with a full wall of assists in front of it, so the same corner can be a formality or a genuine test depending on what you left switched on.

Cover disintegrates, healing means walking into the fight to collect it, and two optional bosses sit several tiers above everything around them.

Swinging is forgiving by design. The spikes are the crowded arena fights on Ultimate, where one unblocked rifle burst is most of a health bar.

Parry windows are strict and stances are rock-paper-scissors against four enemy types. Lethal makes both sides die in two hits and turns duels into reading contests.