Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Aggressive rather than punishing — dying costs you almost nothing, so the walls are boss-shaped and the rest is spectacle.

Progression is gated behind bosses you are expected to build an arena for, and the game tells you almost none of that. Hardmode is a difficulty setting you trigger permanently, by hand.

Sixty hours of systems the game never explains, hiding behind a weapon whose fourth input you have not found yet.

Driving it is a fraction of it. The car arrives on a setup that is wrong for the conditions, the game does not say so, and a lap that felt fine can be two seconds off because the tyre pressures were.

Aim matters less than knowing what the other team can do to you, and the roster is large enough that this takes a very long time to learn.

A game about item literacy: the run is won or lost by whether you recognise a pickup you have never seen before.

Building is a second game bolted to the first, played at a speed that looks like a bug, and the mode that removes it is where most people should start.

Aim is only half of it — the generation means the run you get may simply not contain the item you needed, and the game will not tell you that either.

Steady, honest pressure plus a map that makes you earn the right to know where you are standing.

There is no block button — parrying is a direction plus an attack, aimed at the incoming blow, and the game tells you this once and then assumes it.