As a kid I played to be entertained, if a game was punishingly difficult or tricky I'd find ways to work around it, mostly by using cheats or not playing it as it should be played. In Thief I wouldn't particularly sneak around much, I'd just hack away at the guards, or just use the level skip code to a more accommodating level.
Today, in my early twenties, I'm a changed man. I rarely, if ever, use cheats in a game. Even games like GTA, I refused to use any cheats, at the very least until I had completed the main storyline. Now I like the challenge a game gives me, though it must be a reasonable challenge, not cheap tricks the game uses to make it unfairly difficult.
I will say though, I felt games I played back in the mid-late 90's to be easier to play and finish back then. For instance, I tried playing Indiana Jones on GameGear, and found the controls to much stiffer then I remembered, levels more difficult and overall much more clumsy. Not sure if that's because I'm old and my fingers aren't as twitchy as they once were, or simply because I had few games to play back in the day so I played the hell out of what I had, until I had everything memorized. How times change.
