I just found out that Ghostrunner's Hardcore Mode turns a good game into a great game. It had me sweating so much, flying around like a human ping-pong ball, and finally winning a level after a hundred deaths and a thousand near-ones.

How do you define what type of games benefit most from going through them on a harder difficulty?

Before now, I always though of higher difficulty modes as something to keep you from getting bored when re-visiting a game you already played. But it has the potential to elevate an experience beyond that original, and I would like to discover more.

I'm sure for some types of games, it just makes things a chore. I know for Mass Effect 1, which I replayed multiple times, the highest difficulty makes enemies into damage sponges and reduces XP gain, making me tick down the difficulty a notch subsequent play-throughs. In contrast, it's a well worn design for Action RPGs to grant additional XP when applying difficulty modifiers, which can make grinding more fun than it would otherwise be.