a game evidently isn't hard FOR YOU if you don't die. yes if you're very skilled you could conceivably get through a game that is 'hard' on some absolute scale without dying much, but that kind of metric isn't useful to anyone.
(obviously we are only talking about action games and the like here)
skyward sword is a very odd example - i didn't feel challenged by that game at all. you can take a ton of hits, there's a lot of healing available, and the enemy patterns are simple. consequently, you can't die except by 'being stupid' or 'sucking it up.'
also meat boy is not particularly hard. too many checkpoints.
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