Yeah I can't remember the last time I actually stopped playing before I beat a challenging section.  GoW1 on God mode had a certain room, but that was mainly me screwing myself over because I used up all my magic before it thinking there would be some rejuvination since I remembered it was basically the hardest part in the game.  I think I died about 30 times before finally beating it but I was about ready to tear my hair out.  I only get annoyed when I have to go through 15 minutes of easiness, don't get a checkpoint, and have to face something way harder only to die and not get to face it again for 15 minutes.  Of course most people think of this as a challenge because most games give you full health when you restart at a checkpoint but why not balance it by giving you the checkpoint but only have as much health as you had before?  Challenge maintained but going through another 15 minutes of tedium and easiness avoided.

People are used to regenerating armor/health and stupid AI that isn't even a threat.
Mistakes are forgiven - In some games you even are allowed to continue after you failed a jump over a gap cause the game is just "returning time to the moment before the jump" and just punishes you with slightly health loss instead of resetting you to a checkpoint or to the beginning of the level/map/mission.

In old days before this Gen all of this didn't exist.
Kids grow up with that and if a game is too hard they cry.
Games like Demon/Dark Souls are perfectly balanced and it is your fault if you fail and you get punished pretty hard compared to other games of this Gen.
Kids can't accept that - Same goes for God of War cause most people are used to win while throwing the pad against a wall...This is in this Gen enough to be a MLG Pro in some shooters ;)

I agree. I didn't know I could kick the barrels. I kept shooting them because the NPCs said they were full of napalm, but they wouldn't explode. I didn't know they were kickable until bananaking21 mentioned it XD

Is that what choosing different type of difficulty is for ?

Still it sad that older games is much more harder than the present games we have. Game like Ghost & Goblin,Ninja Gaiden SNES ( can't remember which platform it is ), Shinobi, Battle Toads, Contra

Now we have a lot of generic FPS game that try to follow COD path such as having regenerating health ( not realistic at all ) & checkpoint every 3-5 minutes instead of letting us having an option to save by ourself.

Still i looking forward to Dark Souls 2 :) Hopefully they don't dumb down the difficulty since this is the only present game which is challenging and offer frustration at the same time xD

I used to think that Halo was challenging on normal. Actually I still consider Halo 2's Normal mode pretty hard. Anyway, now Heroic is what I play Halo on, but I still consider Legendary a little more frustrating than fun. If I ever get so good at Halo that Legendary becomes a walk in the park I won't blame the devs for making the games too easy. I'll just know that I've gotten so good that I've outgrown standard and advanced difficulty.

Let me put it this way. Most people consider Pac-Man a very challenging game. Very few people have ever even seen it's kill screen. Even fewer have been able to master Pac-Man and play a perfect game. As a quarter munching arcade game it makes sense to make a game so difficult almost nobody will finish it. But home gaming isn't about sucking up quarters. It's about entertaining people. If COD or Halo were so hard that nobody could get past the third level without dedicating hours of training a day people would just quit. Only people with dedication  like Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell would ever see the end of them. People looking for entertainment aren't looking for frustration.

Devs have to makes games for the middle ground. We are lucky they give us the option for harder difficulties. I have no idea why Assassin's Creed doesn't give difficult options. That is a failure on their part. But most games have very hard difficulty settings that challenge most advanced players.

If you really are unchallenged by the hardest settings on games like COD and Halo then maybe you are just too good for your own good. Devs don't make games for the best of the best of the best. They makes games for regular people and try to accommodate for those who want it a little easier or harder. You maybe just be in the minority outlier group of extreme advanced players that can't be served by regular games.

manually saving on consoles is very painful. I'd rather have checkpoints then.

It can also be exploited even more, so it's actually less challenging.

That why I am hapy that we still have Japapanese devs making crazy oldshool style games. were you have to actully have to learn enamy ai and perfect your timing.

Fire Emblem: Awakening is satisfying my old school hard itch atm but yeah the game industry today makes a lot of easy games...

In line with the OP, I really only die in Assassin's Creed to fall damage. ;p

I try to avoid all easy games. I'm wrapping up getting platinum trophies in star ocean, cross edge, and ninja gaiden sigma plus. All very hard games, and all very rewarding to 100%. Throw in Heroes of Newerth for PC and you've got yourself a competitive online game with the most steep and unforgiving learning curve out there. /End of brag

You haven't noticed this until now? It has been happening since the NES days.