[General Discussion] Difficulty in games

I hate challenges that are hard just because they are time consuming or based on dumb luck. I played Contra: Shattered Soldier for the PS2, and compared to the original Contra, it's hard for different reasons. There are several times you can die in C:SS due to something just falling on one half of the screen and instantly taking it out, or you have to jump across a gap right away, because it gets closed off after a second. In the original Contra, you'd see the enemy coming, and have time to prepare. The trick was usually timing a jump to not get hit by the enemy you saw coming. That is basing the difficulty on the player's precision. If a game has poor conrols or a poor camera, it is hard to get good precision, and the difficulty that comes with it isn't a result of a player not being skilled enough.

Jam it back in, in the dark.