Ask for the shape of the challenge.

It is not hard to survive so much as hard to be told nothing and still choose the right direction.

Death is frequent, instant and immediately retried, and every puzzle is solvable from what the room shows you. Nothing here is hidden from a patient player.

A fishing game with an inventory puzzle and a night timer. Panic is the mechanic, and the punishment for giving in to it is deliberately mild.

Two players, one screen, no difficulty setting. The hard part is coordination, and the game restarts you both a second after it goes wrong.

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.

Combat that yields immediately to a difficulty slider, wrapped around a preparation system the game quietly assumes you will ignore.

Every individual mechanic is trivial; the difficulty is entirely another human being who cannot hear what you are shouting.

A blockbuster that expects to be finished, with the actual demands parked in optional bosses you can walk past without the story noticing.

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.

Combat is scored on the beat and will still let you win off it. Playing to the rhythm is the difference between a rank and a mess.