Is it okay for games to be unforgivably difficult, or should players be allowed to play however they want?

I miss the days of readily available cheats. Also, I think games should have as many difficulty options as possible. I think things should be crushingly hard for those that want it, and completely painless and effortless for those that want it. However, I wouldn't rope permadeath into that, necessarily. I like XCOM, for example.

The core of this question is whether video games are art or toys. If they are art then they should be experienced as the creator intended, if they are toys then they should entertain you above all else.

Considering the fact every souls game that has come out had a exploitable farming glitch, I don't think they care either way

I think they're both fine, as long as games explain themselves properly? Like, NES games were frustrating because they explained themselves poorly and they were unforgivably difficult because every dev still had a coin-op mentality or something.

In a more modern context, I'm fine with the difficulty of Spelunky or Dark Souls. But I still think Dark Souls greatest fault is how poorly it explains its systems, though Dark Souls II had some improvements in that area. Like, I'm fine if the combat is really punishing and Anor Londo archers and all that, but it's just fucking stupid that there is so much stuff in the Souls games you have to look up in a wiki because the game barely hints at how it works.

I think the one big fuckup with Binding of Isaac Rebirth is that they still didn't fix the fucking item collection screen to actually tell you what the fuck all of the items do and all the trinkets do once you've picked them up at least one time. Instead, it's still nothing more than a checklist of what items you've picked up, and unlike the Spelunky journal it still tells you nothing at all about what the items do. And because the game has like 50 times as many items as Spelunky, you have to constantly keep platinumgod.co.ok open or the Binding of Isaac wiki. It's fucking terrible.

@geraltitude said:

Shovel Knight had the same setup, and yeah, it's a bummer. Because then you get reviewers like Patrick going "Ehh, Shovel Knight was pretty easy", then people go "But the NG+ mode is basically hard mode" and then reviewers go "Ehhh, I already played it once, already wrote the review, fuck it". I mean, NG+ in Shovel Knight is fucked because everything does double damage and full health turkeys are basically removed from the game in 95% of cases, but it does remove like 2/3rds of the checkpoints from each stage, which makes the game feel a lot better compared to the original version where there's a checkpoint every 2 damn screens.

I think Shovel Knight needed a toggle when you start a new save of "Do you want a sissy amount of checkpoints?" or "Do you want a Mega Man amount of checkpoints?"

A little of both I suppose. I lean more to letting the developer create the experince they want to with full control. But every once in a while minor details will annoy me enough to where I want to either change it or quit. Personally I think mod support is a better compromise than other options because it mean I most likely REALLY want to change something to go ahead with it, rather than just being lazy. Though that obviously won't apply to everyone.