Steve you should've gone for 4. You're a perfect personification of that option. By difficulty I didn't mean at which percentage you play the game. As I've stated, it's about immersion, and realism expectation which both lead to a particular style of play (a sort of INNER difficulty). Let me give another example:
GUITAR HERO 3... don't laugh please...
Option 1: Love the game at parties or for a quick fix.
Option 2: Cool game, I've beaten it on Hard but some songs on Expert are torture... _uck this.
Option 3: I'm one of the only 3 guys that beat Through Fire and Flames 100% on Expert in the world. Ok, not yet... but next time!!!
Option 4: When I get drunk, I play this game and I'm ON THE STAGE!
I'm both Option 2 and Option 4. But the last one is evidently more relevant. It's something that you have, or don't have... and you have it (for SH, I mean)
. As you can see, I didn't even talk about type of targeting for that option. Some play it like I do with max time compression, some with minimum (respect Golden
). Some load, some don't. But all of them never shy away from sheer difficulty, but accept as a part of "real life", not even something to beat or master (as option 3 does).
EDIT: there, changed option 3 to make it more relevant
. Hope it's a bit more clear now. As I said, it's hard to distinguish difficulty options from realism and immersion. Especially for one with a non-english native language.