People complained that games like the new PoP was too easy with the removals of deaths. However, playing some GTA IV today, on the final mission, I was pretty annoyed that I did a shit load of things, got killed cheaply (got dumped in the water, swam to the boat, and BAM, got an RPG on me without even starting the boat), and had to do everything all over again.

Do saves count as making a game easier, or making it less frusturating?

Do having no check points, count as making a game easier, or making it less frusturating?

Some people praise Demon's Soul for its difficulty and harsh punishments.

What do you guys think? What's the "line"?

Its frustrating because you will get past all the easy parts and then die at the one part that is difficult and it just makes me wanna not play the game anymore. There are some games where I swear the dev didn't even test out at certain parts.

I hate going trough a long level than getting killed cheaply, and having to start the entire level again. x_x

And Demon's Souls is just plain fun

Harshly punishing a player challenges his patience, not his skill. Sadly, most gamers don't even realize there's a difference between the two.

Of course, that doesn't mean there should never be penalties. In most games, some penalty is often required. However, a proper penalty only returns a player to the beginning of the challenge he failed. This forces him to complete that challenge with skill, instead or forcing his way through with persistance and luck. If a player is instead forced to replay long stretches of easy content before he can try again, that crosses the line into punishment.

I think that the best thing that a game could have is checkpoints. One of the things that kills a game for me is dying on a late section of a level only to have to do the whole thing over again. It kind of kills the flow of the game (even more if it loads a lot), not to mention it is a major time waster if there is a lack of save points. It just sucks whenever you have to play for about an hour just to reach some kind of checkpoint, that or get to the part that you died at in the first place.

Saving Points are good but they have to be balanced. Its a thing of balance.

One thing I cant accept is what Forza showed recently. It destroys what people coud achieve through Skills.

Its the Replay function. In a Racing SIM thats horrible. Everybody can drive every track without playing good because he can click on rewind.

Its not that they include a Replay Function. But how they have included it. You can use it infinite times. I could accept it that it could lower the frustration if someone did one little stupid mistake and press replay but if you do this mistake twice its definetly your fault. You can go through time backwards as often you want so you can practically win every Race. Oh shit I made a mistake while I tried to overtake the opponent. No problem rewind. Oh I made it again Rewind. And you get even the same amount of credits if you use it 1000 times or if you dont use it at all. Thats a mistake.

Its a matter of balance. Because if you can correct in every game every mistake then your skills dont matter. And it can destroy games completly in my eyes. If a Racing Game slows you down automaticaly like shift it shows you the line and combined with replay its just a joke. If the game take all the work of the Player why not instead watch a movie.

sometimes I think that the people forget how it was in the Past. Infact not everybody could beat every game. And yes its sometimes frustrating but you know you did something what not everybody was able to do.

I dont know but sometimes I feel like if I was an Idiot which is too stupid to master a game and the Programmers gave me atleast 53 coaching functions plus 2 different types of backup functions so I can replay every single scene.

Ofcourse its not that bad but compared to the past it is ofcourse not in every game.

Some frustration is necessary not too much. Its the developers work to think about ways to make a game hard but also avoid situations which are only hard because of bad game design. Because thats the situations which are realy frustrating. If you die because you did something wrong its necessary to be punished.

A game like Alone in the Dark where you can skip the Acts if you want because they wanted to create a DVD like experience is just trash.

I want games to be challenging not because of bad game design but because of good game design. (Dont know how to express it differently)

I think it all comes down to how developers balance out the overall difficulty of their games.

Quite frankly, most of the times, when it comes to a challenge, I rather play an older generation game to most 7th gen game and forward due to most recent games having way too many systems in which you can save your progress or make sure that you don't die, like check points, auto-saves, infinite lives, regenerating health, replaying on part over and over again.
Sometimes it's even worse than the Save State function in emulators, which is a function that's going to be introduced on future PSP firmware, another "cut some slack" to the player technique

As I said, nowadays games are mostly too easy. With the obvious exceptions of games Like Devil May Cry, Persona 3, Geometry Wars, Ninja Gaiden and a few others, the others just don't give enough challenge, except in punctual places like the OP said, which are the parts that I enjoy the most in actual games.

Coming from the Ghost and Goblins, Battletoads, Double Dragon, Contra, Shinobi, Ninja Gaiden, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Dragon Quest, heck, even Super Mario Bros 2 was more difficult than almost all nowadays games combined, you can see why I enjoy challenging games and challenging parts of a game and don't find them frustrating at all.