The game I'm thinking of is fairly new and is quite a popular one. Usually the really really hard games you hear about are always for the old systems. Well this one is for the Xbox 360, and I have never played a game as hard as this one. Ninja Gaiden 2.
I understand that players want a challenge when they play a game, and don't want to be able to walk through it like it was nothing, but when the easiest mode on the game is not easy by any stretch of the imagination, then you know they just screwed up.
My friend has played this game on the easiest mode and just simply could not beat it. He quit after trying so many times. What sucks is when he saw this game he was really excited about it. It looked so awesome, that I just had to buy it for us.
This is the kind of game where if you're not careful, the most insignificant enemies could kill you. For example: If you weaken your enemy enough he usually ends up crawling on the floor, or limping in some way. This is when you perform a finishing move to permanently kill him. The problem is, if you're not fast enough when you approach him, he could take out half of your life bar. They blow themselves up with you if you're next to them for more than 3/4 of a second. It's a beginner's trap and it's just dumb, cheap, and makes players really angry when you're trying to conserve all the healing items you can.
As if that's not bad enough, it's nothing compared to the bosses in this game. I have to point out that in all the games that I've played, I have never dealt with such a frustrating experience as fighting the bosses in Ninja Gaiden 2. The thing is, the amount of concentration and practice you need to get by some of them isn't even worth it. You could have a boss down to 3% of its life bar, and you could have full health, and still die. If you're not careful, or if you make one simple mistake, one little press of the wrong button, you could end up caught in some vicious combo that will drain your health to practically zero.
Now believe it or not, I beat this game on the easiest mode and on the next mode. Yea it is possible, but that doesn't mean everybody wants to go through all the trouble of doing it. There are some parts of the game where I literally just kept dieing to the same enemies over and over again because I was studying their movement patterns, constantly practicing dodging their attacks. It helped, but it by no means made it easy for me. I still died to them a lot because, well, nobody's perfect, and it's kind of hard to see an attack coming when you only have 1/2 a second to react.
So I bet you're wondering what the last boss was like

Well I'll just say that I spent hours dieing to him before I killed him. Yea hours, no joke. I was up until about 2 AM. You can't save it directly before a boss battle, and there was no way I was going to go through the entire level again the next day.
Well all that aside, I've never played the first one so I wouldn't know how hard it is. But Ninja Gaiden 2 just went too far, and it is practically impossible to enjoy the game, unless you really, and I mean really know what you're doing.