I think Mario Galaxy is easy, but it never got frustrating even when you die a few times. Hard games are wicked, but don't make them tedious and frustrating, i still can't get past that friggin chasing soldiers section near the end of Metroid 3 on normal diff. I gave up and that is my grievence with harder games. Hardcore is not hard, it means excessively violent, sexist, language, i think. And that doesn't mean a game is better, just that it has niched itself in to a corner, watch the FPS's try and break out, MS it aint gonna happen son...
“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.
