Resident Evil 7's Madhouse is a great example of difficulty done right
From PCGamer
Something that Resident Evil fans like to talk about a lot is how long they'd survive in Spencer's Mansion or Raccoon City before having a zombie pull their jugular vein straight out of their neck and eat it. I always thought I'd be able to make it pretty far because those zombies move slowly and I'm a pretty good shot with an airsoft gun—yes, I know real guns are not the same thing, but I once shot my friend right in the butt. Precision aim. However, I now know for a fact that I would not survive for very long on the Bakers' plantation, thanks to Madhouse's cruel realization of just how fucked up Ethan's situation is in Resident Evil 7. And I'm still probably being a little bit overconfident.I've beaten Resident Evil 7 on Normal difficulty twice. In my first playthrough, before the final stretch of enemies, I had 67 handgun bullets, 36 shotgun shells, 160 machine gun bullets, nine remote bombs, and a bunch of support items. My second playthrough wasn't too different, and I was never conservative with my ammo. I was Mr. Video Game Hero, and I was really good at making monsters' heads go boom. In fact, there wasn't a single monster I came across that didn't end up headless at some point. If this version of me was real, girls would think I'm cool.
This feeling, however, would not last in my third playthrough. After seeing both endings, I wanted a challenge, and the Madhouse difficulty—unlocked by completing the game—was my only option. Knowing nothing other than the requirement of cassette tapes to save, I jumped in, expecting to be faced with a harder version of the game I already knew. And that's what it seemed like up until the garage fight with Jack Baker. Having done this twice before, running over Jack with my car both times, I sprinted over to where the keys were. But wait. Where are the keys? All I saw was a locked box only accessible with a lockpick. A panic spread over me, as I slowly started to realize the game was going to play on my expectations for the next eight hours. I scrambled to find a lockpick, no idea where to start, running laps around the garage as a crazy old man chased me.
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