13. No Obnoxious Difficulty
The reason many people complain that modern games are too easy is because, frankly, many older games were extremely difficult. With no save system and a limited amount of lives, games were designed to crush the player's soul and leave them as a weeping ball of failure. This was the case partially because many games were designed for the arcade, and in order to get as much money out of players as possible, designers made it pretty much impossible to beat it without putting more quarters in. Lets just say you'd have to be one dedicated (and rich) gamer to master these games. This was the reason why the original Mortal Kombat games were so unfair, as they tried to squeeze every last quarter out of you. I, for one, am glad that games are no longer this difficult. Yes, games should offer the player a challenge, but many older games go beyond that and are just unfair. Contra is still considered to be one of the hardest games ever made to this day, and some may take pleasure in subjugating themselves to its difficulty, but I find such an experience a frustrating exercise in futility. The pleasure of playing a video game does not all come from the challenge presented, but the overall enjoyment of the experience, of which challenge is but one aspect. Video games should, first and foremost, be fun, and making them impossible to beat without cheat codes or a lot of patience does not make for a fun game. Perhaps it is true that games are a little too easy nowadays, but I'll take the current difficulty over the just plain unfair design used in the past.