I recieved a PM from Ischa reacting to my review of Jazz Planets 2. One thing really stood out in the PM to me. The first is in which I complained at how dull the crate breaking levels were and how the last few variants had far too many crates to even be considered fun. Ischa countered this with "DO YOU JUST LIKE EASY LEVELS".

This has gotten me thinking, in my 'career' of reviewing SP packs I know will be average or worse, whenever I mentioned that a certain element was highly dull or too frustrating to be fun the creator always countered with "I guess you don't like hard levels".

It could be the creators can't take crit and improve themselves, it could be I'm just a nitpicky whiny git, however I don't believe that I don't like hard levels. I have had my (-)(-)(-) handed to me in Deserto (JJ1, and Mike's pack) repeatedly, but I still go back to try again. I still feel entertained even when I see Jazz turn to ashes. I have had the same experience with Rayman 1 and other games. On the flip of the coin, I have played other games where I just got too bored or too frustrated at it's "difficulty" to continue onward.

And so, I'd like to see what you guys feel creates 'fun' difficulty, something that while hard and perhaps frustrating still brings the player back, and what is what I like to call 'newbie level designer' difficulty, something thats hard for hardness sake and isn't really compelling. Or other various theories of difficulty that don't fit into my black-and-white mold.