That's the first time anybody has ever commented on my post count, I feel like a real veteran now!

Most of them actually come from the mafia games in the Gameroom (a few forums down), you should check it out.

Mount & Blade is another game that benefits from high difficulty. There is the saving option, as Froggy mentioned, which means you can't reload after a defeat. Well you can alt F4 before the map screen, but that would be lame and I certainly would never do such a thing. The difficultly levels relating to damage also make a huge change, going from kiting around on a horse couching everything on 1/4 damage to full damage and manual block on foot is huge. I enjoyed the game far more when I came off the horse, and again when I discovered the damage level can be changed.