Hard Games: When Frustration Takes Over Fun

I have a history with temper tantrums when it comes to video games.  Sometimes I throw controllers, and I've thrown and broken a DS and a Vita before.  It's been over a year since I've thrown something.  The last being the Vita.  Today, Dark Souls caused me to break my PS3 controller.  It's not funny.  It really isn't.

It's not that the game's hard that's the problem.  It's the way Dark Souls is designed.  They don't put shortcuts directly to the boss room, and they don't let you retry things.  You have to start over wherever your last checkpoint was.  This is something that From Software is known for, making ridiculously hard games.  But, it doesn't need to always be that way.

I was fighting The Four Kings, the boss of New Londo Ruins, and the path to get to them even after you've opened a "shortcut", Attempting to kill everything up to the boss room is not only a waste of time, but a risk as well.  I have to run past five dragons and about 10 Darkwraiths (mean nasty knights), and a ghost that can go through the fog gate leading to the boss room, which they aren't supposed to do.  I run past everything because I don't want to fight everything.  Yet, even trying to run past everything, I can still get hit and killed.  An enemy decides to do a different attack and I somehow roll into it, or a dragon's wing pushes me in front of the other's lightning breath.

I JUST want to keep trying the boss over and over again.  I'm the type of person who learns through repetition, but it's really distracting to me when I have to keep running through crap to get back to the boss fight.  Some times nothing posses a threat at all.  When I was struggling with the boss of Anor Londo, I had at least a two minute run of nothing until I got to enemies to start dodging before the fog gate.

Now, I understand people like this kind of difficulty, and that's fine.  I don't want From Software to start making the base difficulty easier but what I want is an option for an easy mode, or at least a save anywhere option, or a boss retry, something to take the tediousness of having to return to the boss room over and over and over again.  "Well, you should get better!"  That's not the point!  The point is, I shouldn't have to waste so much time to come back to a boss when I have to attempt it over and over again.

It's silly when you think about it.  Video games are the only entertainment medium that cannot be enjoyed due to lack of skill.  You pay a lot of money for these things, and if for whatever reason you can't pass it, then you've just wasted money.  I know I can beat this boss; I know I can beat the game.  I just didn't want to keep running through the same damn enemies over and over again.  I lost it.  Rest in peace, PS3 controller.