Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Pace notes, no rewind on the harder settings, and a damage model that ends a rally on one bad corner. The hardest driving in the catalogue by a distance.

The difficulty is mostly geography — knowing which door to take is worth more than any weapon in the game.

Its difficulty is crowd control, not duels: the game throws groups and ranged attackers at you constantly, and the second world doubles the population.

The one that attacks your resources rather than your reflexes — your maximum health falls every time you die, and the ambushes are designed around you not knowing they are there.

The combat is the gentlest in the family and the systems are the cruellest — dying moves you to soul form at half health, and the game never says so.

You choose which limb to cut off, which means every fight is a decision about what you want to be wearing afterwards rather than only about surviving it.

Everything the 3D games do, minus a camera and plus a pit — the second axis of movement is gone, so a mistimed roll usually means falling somewhere worse.

Short and dense, and almost nothing in it is labelled — you learn what an item does by eating it and finding out.

Friendly fire is always on, and the top difficulties are a logistics problem for four people. A good squad wipes to its own airstrike about as often as to the enemy.

Souls stamina and checkpoints with a gun in your hands, so the dodge is still the answer but the aim decides whether the dodge was needed.