Ask for the shape of the challenge.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Enormous and completely indifferent — most of its walls are optional, and it will never tell you which ones.

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.

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.

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

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