@MJBrune I think I really like timed challenges even if I'm not very good at them.

Like block -> parry

Also with tolerance areas where you can hit a "passing" "good" or "perfect" score.

Forced sections in AAA games. If you wander left or wander right or jump or sneak a direction it didn't want you get a mysterious death. Just make it a cutscene if you are going to pidgeonhole me so much assasins creed, or a cartoon movie.

Combos. I don't like them when they're intentional by the developer, they need to be something that you feel like you've discovered on your own. I hear Baba is You is pretty good about that.

I recently observed a game of MtG where a newish player was playing a scry deck, some premade or something, had a guy who would scry every time a creature dropped, and a guy who would place counters every time he scried. He'd edited the deck slightly, added a creature that spawned tokens every time it received counters. Managed to get them all out at once before realising what he'd done; straight up had to ask if tokens count as creatures dropping because he wasn't sure if infinite combos were real. That's a good feeling, because it's something he did, not something that was given to him.

Contrast League or Overwatch or whatever where the devs have specific ideas about how characters should work and will aggressively destroy things outside of that. Or just modern Magic.

I hate stealth. I want to go everywhere guns blazing. This is what ruined the Farcry series for me. Having unskippable stealth sections.

One of my favorites that I fell in love with was a particular class on an MMO game called Rift. It was the chloromancer. In practice it was tricky and arguable how effective it is but it was a healer class that provided raid/group heals by doing damage. Your damage attacks would provide the heals.

Just a neat concept I immediately fell in love with.