OMG! This game is SO HARD!!!

[Mass Distraction]

What do you guys think about the difficulty of games nowadays? Do you prefer your games to be hard or are you just in for the story and nothing more?

I came up with this when I was playing Ninja Gaiden 3 for PS3. It's so odd to see a game that was once known as the hardest game ever to hold your hand like this. Rarely I even see games holding your hand as much as this game does, reminding me every few minutes to hit enemies by pressing the "attack" button or to check where I'm going even when I'm in a straight hallway with absolutely nowhere to go but forwards. I'm well over halfway through the game and I'm still feeling like I'm in a tutorial mission.

There are still legitly hard games out there too but when a game actually is a tough nut to crack, so to speak, it seems to result in some reviewers saying that "the game is too hard, minus 10,000 points". What happened to appreciating the difficulty? Where's the challenge in just walking through what is essentially an interactive movie? Am I the only one who feels good about triumphing over an insanely difficult part? Backtracking and free roaming in most mainstream games seems to be a thing of the past. The lack of innovation nowadays hurts me. Sometimes people even need to come up with more difficutly themselves, hence the uprise of things like Permadeath, Nuzlocke Run and Green Demon Challenge.

Getting back to NG3, the game is okay but... repetitive. They improved on a lot of things but the cost was a really dumbed down game. Is that really what people want?

So many questions, so few answers... That's why I'd appreciate your input!