>>713754447 (OP)
I remember at least one Soulslike where the mimics had a gimmick that you could tell if they were real or not, and the game just randomly had one mimic with no tell at all, so it was a guaranteed death.
Might've just been one of the regular Souls games though, IDFK.
I suppose to a lesser extent that whole thing Elden Ring bosses do where they add pauses and randomly extended combos counts as "artificial difficulty" in the sense that the only tells they have are things you don't notice until several playthroughs later, assuming they even have a tell, but at least the game offers ways around this via tank builds, multiplayer, becoming hilariously overleveled, or using weird cheese trickery.
>>713765903
Can't speak for OP or for Crash at all, but if you take a game carefully, you shouldn't lose (unless there's a time limit) via anything you can't control.
Having games just outright instakill you for the sheer crime of picking Door 2 instead of Door 1 is literally just shit they put in older games for the sole purpose of extending the gameplay so you're less likely to beat it in a rental session. It's not there to challenge you, it's not there to remind you of how tough the game's supposed to be, it's solely there to pad game time and slow you down so you're more likely to rent it for longer or give up and buy it outright.
That's it.
It's not a sign that the devs want to challenge you, it's not there to make the game feel "hardcore", it's just a remnant of an old trick used to fleece kids out of extra money.
Difficulty should be about what you can do as a player, how well you manage resources, how well you pay attention to details, and how you handle tough situations, not your ability to flip a coin.
