Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Nothing fails quickly. A road laid in the first hour becomes unfixable in the twentieth, and that delay is the only real difficulty in it.

A card game that keeps changing what kind of game it is. The difficulty is noticing which rules you are allowed to break, and when.

Straightforward once you find the right weapon, and famously obtuse about its second half — the difficulty is knowing that half exists at all.

Death drops your gear where you died, and where you died is usually the swamp. The stamina economy keeps fights short and losing them expensive.

Two games in one box. The campaign is forgiving and will hand you wins on assists; the licence golds and the online time trials are a precision game with a tenth of a second between grades.

Kinder than the first in every way that matters — the instant-death platforming is gone — and the map is still built to be read rather than followed.

Wirebugs give every weapon a get-out-of-jail move, which makes this the entry that will actually teach you the series rather than survive you learning it.

Runs are fast and deaths are total. Boss cells stack modifiers until a loadout that felt comfortable dies to two hits, and there is no difficulty setting hiding under them.

A city builder where the scarce resource is time and every law you sign is unrepealable. The storm arrives on schedule whether or not the city is ready.

Difficulty is a clock rather than a setting: everything you do to get stronger also makes the timer worse. Monsoon runs end in seconds when they end.