I like games that have multiple difficulty levels, especially those related to sports. Many of the Mario games are good about this. The Golf, Tennis, and Soccer games all have much harder difficulties (and if I remember correctly, you bitched and whined when I went to the higher difficulties, but by the end of it all, we were defeating the hardest levels of all these games; now you walk around with a perpetual stiffy, so I guess it worked out for you). I think that is a good system has an easy enough difficulty that you can play and succeed, but has higher difficulties that allow you to challenge yourself and maybe allow you to unlock game features you otherwise could not enjoy, but features that are not so profound they take away great value in the game. Metroid Prime games are a good example. You may not be able to see the entire ending (solved simply enough by a youtube visit), but you still have the option of challenging yourself and making yourself a better player, while still having fun.

Perhaps I am just really good at a lot of games, or perhaps I do not just shut the game off forever because I died a couple times. The challenge is part of the reason to play for me, but just because a game offers a challenge hardly makes it fun (I am not a fan of FPS in general, but if I am playing one and I basically cannot die, I would have even less fun than if I had to employ at least some strategy to succeed).

Solomon’s Key was an especially unpleasant game. It was fun for a bit, but it comes to a point where that game is not fun enough to justify large quantities of time spent on pain and suffering. When playing Brawl Boss Battles on Intense difficulty, that was still fun, even though I got smeared several times before finally breaking through (and that was an amazing feeling of accomplishment to do).

Lately, I do not get much enjoyment from the new games. As you said, controls often suck and the gameplay is often not very fun. I still occasionally play some of the older games NES/SNES/Cube because they are fun.

The funny thing is I can still pick up Super Metroid and spend 3 hours running through it despite having played through it more times than I can recall. I think it may be precisely because it is an example of a game that does not fight me at every turn. It’s not so difficult that I feel like I’m working.

I get that feeling a lot with gaming here lately. I did not use to.

After all, the point of games should surely to be fun and entertaining, not merely addictive.