IDK maybe, I know when I play classics I usually suck (8-32 bit era) but sometimes I think those games were hard due to control issues and lack of save points

Generally yes but im playing metal gear rising and im questioning that. spent along time on the bosses

They absolutely have. There is no real argument against that fact. Classic arcade and console games from the 80s era especially, you had to actually get GOOD at. It was a skill, like any other, that you had to hone to be able to really excel at it. If you wanted to beat a game, you had to get good enough at it to do so. These days, most modern games hold your hand so much that you can outright suck at a game and still see the ending. There are of course many exceptions. But I've seen it too much.

And it's not about games NEEDING to be "hard" to be good. That is a misguided philosophy and always has been. It's the fact that modern game design has taken the need to actually get GOOD at a given game out of the equation, with infinite lives/continues, regenerating health, constant in-game hints, allowing you retry a mission/objective/level over and over till you get it right, etc. Games don't need to be HARD. They just need to let you fuckin' PLAY them, and really get an experience from them, instead of what basically amounts to just being along for the ride while pressing a few buttons.

Games today are MUCH easier than the usual games from the 80s for example. Even the greatest cutscene or ending sequence can't really compensate the fact that many games today feel like you play them with some kind of autopilot. It seems impossible to really fail in a modern game. There's no "3 lifes left", no ultimate "game over" and no true challenge anymore due to the fact that kids these days have such a short attention span and can't cope with frustration at all. The exception proves the rule of course.

For sure. The casual Sony/MS gamer don't really like to spend a lot of time trying to survive a mission.

But if you want a few really hard games just look at some NES classics.

Yeah.

Most mainstream games. Then theres indys and the odd Dark Souls which goes outside the mainstream ideals.

Yes ... it sickens me. Just yesterday I was telling my good friend this. Games hold your hand too much now. Leave that for the easy mode, please. GOW: Ascension had decent challenge and people bitched and cried. Even Adam Sessler was groaning about it. With that said, I can't blame devs too much since the consumers - in the general sense - don't take to them well. A shame ...

Just as an example of how hard games were, most people only remember the first few levels of most old nes games....because they had to replay from the beginning over and over. Like, take for example, Contra.
Everyone knows what the first level looks like, maybe even the second level with the waterfall...but the third level?

I don't think it's as black and white as people think, a lot of older games had design issues for various reasons that made them hard as opposed to the actual content being hard or intended to be hard, games now days have more thought designs and controls as well as people themselves becoming better at games. Play a game like Wonderful 101 on normal to realize games can be just as hard if not harder then previously, I think the difficulty in games has for most part remained the same.