Excellent. We should play games on our own terms. I’ve hit skill barriers in many games, set them aside ‘for a short while’ and never returned to them. I bet I’ve missed so many great moments due to this so now my policy is to lower the difficulty if I’m getting too frustrated.

Also, difficulty levels can be quite arbitrary especially in games that have a particular play mechanic and then introduce something complete different for one level. (My pet hate is token platforming inserted into shooters.)

I remember one game (Indigo Prophecy I think) had a tiny segment that required subtle joystick control to get the player across a narrow beam. Nothing else in the game was like this. I couldn’t do it, countless fails. I asked my young nephew to have a go and he got it on the first try.

Edit: Also I proved my gaming prowess back when easy games had not been invented yet.

This is so true lmao. Every time I play old NES games I'm dumbfounded. It's like half because they're hard and half because the design is wonky. So much has changed since then.

I guess part of it is because arcade games were meant to drain your quarters and older games sort of followed that style to an extent.