My biggest issue with games today isn't the difficulty in itself, it's the way that they try to add more difficulty...
Easy: You don't die, ever.
Medium: If you fail you'll die, standard setting.
Hard: This is where it bothers me. They just add more enemies or whatever obstacle, and you take a little more damage (which regenerates over time, nearly always now).
Veteran: You die from almost one or two shots, which always hit you because it was designed around normal mode, thus making it not difficult but about luck and memory. And they usually either take away ammo, or make your weapons less effective, which makes no sense... why would your M4 do less damage? Did you use rubber bullets?
The root of the problem: Games are being made for a wider audience, and so that people won't try it and say, "Thats too hard, I don't wanna waste my time". The games are developed around easy/normal and thus don't translate very well into a harder difficulty. They become, run through and ignore stuff, don't bother getting better, just find a way to rush through the game and don't bother aiming or using timing.
I see this as the reason why people don't complain about the difficulty in platformers and adventure game nearly as much as shooters or fighting games. The level of difficulty doesn't revolve around numbers of enemies or player skill, but around the design of the level and overall gameplay, the difficulty doesn't change how you play the game, just what happens when you screw up. I think that is why i've become less interested in new shooters ( I hate Halo) and find newer platformers like Prince of Persia(bad example), more interesting.
/rant
sorry. that was supposed to be a sentence response...
