I know this gets brought up a lot in gaming circles, but it hasn't been brought up here before, to my recollection.  Why are modern games so f***ing easy?  I just realized that in over 60 hours of play on the KOTOR games, I DID NOT DIE ONE TIME.  I blew through both games with ease, regardless of the fact that you are for the most part unable to grind your levels up since enemies disappear and stay gone after you kill them. 
I am not a god of gaming.  I have been playing video games since the release of the Atari 2600, when I was about 2 years old, but I am not any better than the few friends I have left who have been gaming for the same amount of time.  Yes, I have improved with all the practice, and thanks to the original NES I am sure my hand/eye coordination is probably at a level where I could perform brain surgery as long as someone guided me through the process, but I'm sure Ad, Pig, and countless other gamers our age could say the same thing.
So why, for f***'s sake, do games keep getting easier?
I know that the stock answer is that they get easier to appeal to the mainstream crowd.  I understand this and have no problem with it.  There should be games which are made to bring in new audiences.  But shouldn't there still be games which cater to the hardcore crowd?  In recent memory, only Ninja Gaiden has really stressed me out when it comes to difficulty.  Back in the NES days, an easy game was a rarity - even games based on Disney's TV cartoon shows provided a challenge.  Anybody besides me remember the game based on the show 'Ducktales'?  You don't get much more mainstream than that, and that game, while not brutal, was challenging.  If they made the same game today it would no doubt hold your hand through at least one tutorial level and then offer hints throughout the game so that you're never lost as to what to do next.  Huey, Dewey, and Louie would show up every single time you needed to do something new to explain exactly how to do it. 
Are kids today stupider than we were?  No, that's ridiculous.  But if you gave them a game like the original Ducktales, which I played when I was the target audience/age, they would lose their minds with frustration and quit before they finished the first level.  I know this is true.  I've seen it, over and over, every time I try to share classic games with my son and his friends.  Give them the original Contra, and they lose their alotted lives in the first level, throw the game aside without even trying a second time, and go back to Wii Sports. 
What?!
When I was very young my parents bought my brothers and I a NES for christmas the year after it came out, and a game each.  So we had Super Mario Bros., the first TMNT game, Ninja Gaiden, and some kind of Sesame Street game for my littlest brother.  My brother Chris and I would spend the entire school day thinking about Super Mario Bros., we would literally run from the bus into the house to get to the system first and call Mario, hating being stuck with Luigi and having to wait.  At first we couldn't even defeat 1-4, and constantly struggled just to stay alive.  We would run out of lives and then anxiously hit the reset button on the console BECAUSE WE DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO WAIT UNTIL THE GAME OVER ANIMATION WAS COMPLETED TO START AGAIN.  One day Chris and I got home and found our little brother Joshy in front of the TV, playing Mario.  Well, sort of playing Mario.  He couldn't figure out how to make him jump (he was [i]very[/i] small) so he just kept running right until he saw the first goomba, then running left and flailing about on the floor in desperation until he was killed.  He was [i]very, very[/i] irritated, but he wasn't giving up.  He had been doing it for over an hour.  My brothers and I laugh it up like crazy over this now, but the idea of my own son doing something like that is inconceivable.  He's growing up with games that hold your hand, and he has no patience for difficult games.  He's not alone.
I think Super Mario Bros. 1 is the perfect game for this kind of debate.  Since noone I know reads game manuals, the first Super Mario game was a fantastic lesson in creative learning - you press start, and there you are, a little man standing on the left of the screen.  You don't know what you're doing or what you're supposed to be doing.  You walk right, a walking mushroom shows up, walks into you, and you die.  There you are again.  You try out your buttons this time, one makes you jump.  This time you jump over the little mushroom.  Eventually you accidentally jump on top of an enemy and you learn you can kill it that way, you learn that jumping and hitting your head on question blocks gives you coins and power-ups, you learn you can run to make longer jumps, and every single time you learn one of these things the game opens up a little.  You see new possibilities and options for gameplay, and all of these things [i]cost[/i] you - nothing is explained, nothing is simply given to you.  You have to figure it all out for yourself.  The first time I beat Super Mario Bros., I had a level of satisfaction that I have probably never equaled in gaming.  It was fun, it was spectacular fun, actually, but it was difficult!  We have nothing like this now.  Even Mario games now explain every single thing you can do in complete detail.  Where is my son's Super Mario Bros.?
Like I said, there [i]should[/i] be easy games for the absolute n00b.  We need Wii Sports to grab the attention of people who otherwise wouldn't play a game.  I personally find it difficult to believe that we need to get grandmas the world over playing, but that's not really relevant here.  We need Wii Sports.  I get it.  But we also need tough, creative games that don't hold your hand and lead you through the experience by your nose.  The pussification of gaming is an alarming thing because the next generation of gamers (our own sons and daughters) simply isn't [i]getting[/i] it - these things aren't supposed to be simple experiences that you play through for the rpg factor (I AM YU-GI-OH!  HOORAY!  I AM THAT GUY FROM THE TV!) alone, they are supposed to be challenging, they are supposed to take you a month to beat, they are supposed to require practice and skill.  [i]There's nothing wrong with a game that makes you break a controller or two.[/i]  Games today are afraid to frustrate the player, and that's sad.  With no frustration, with no skill or practice required, there is no real satisfaction in becoming skilled and defeating the challenge.
KOTOR I and II were fun.  They really made me feel like I was in the Star Wars universe, and I loved them.  I'm dying to play the next one.  It just would've been nice if I'd, you know, had to [i]try[/i].