It's funny you mention this -- I once discussed Fallout 3 with a friend who said he simply couldn't play the game for long periods of time because the world was so drab, dreary, and depressing that he couldn't enjoy himself, which, to him, is of paramount importance when playing a video game. And I'm sure that "decrepit ugly" was on the docket for that game as well as for Killzone 2 -- it just seems like that's the type of world both developers wanted to create, and the emotions that the Capital Wasteland and Helghan evoked in my friend and in you, respectively, were probably 100% intended (and the desired results for Bethesda and Guerrilla, respectively).

Great article, N'Gai, and I definitely agree that -- as the industry opens itself up to the masses -- games need to be finish-able above all else. There's nothing wrong with presenting a challenge for the longtime (i.e., "hardcore") gamer, but unless the title in question is supposed to be balls-hard (e.g., Ikaruga, Mega Man 9), everyone should be able to get through it.

However, I don't think analyzing a gamer's Achievements/Trophies is a plausible way to gauge difficulty. First off, I've owned a PS3 since December 2006, but I still haven't unlocked a single Trophy -- it's just that none of the games I've played on my console happen to support the system yet. Secondly, that kind of "you provide this input, we'll adjust the difficulty accordingly" system would likely be really hard to pull off in practice. For example, EA Tiburon tried it with Madden NFL 09 and failed miserably.

Dynamic difficulty adjustment, when done right, is a great option. Max Payne did it on the fly in the background, so if you were kicking ass, it would scale the enemy A.I. up (and vice versa) -- and I didn't even know it was there in that game until someone told me. Of course, there's probably some floor for the A.I. difficulty in that game, so I don't know if anyone could beat it, but it worked well enough.