>  The most blatant fake difficulty I have seen is in Doom 3.

In FarCry it's pretty poor too.  I usually played it on one of the easier 
levels, but then one day decided to do it on the hardest.  I gave up after 
about 1 minute, because I shot a guy in the head from about 1 metre away 3 
or 4 times and he just stood there preparing to shoot me.  Eventually he got 
round to shooting me and I died instantly.  Firstly, if I shoot someone in 
the head I at least expect them to move a bit, and secondly if a "hard" AI 
is standing right in front of me, I expect him to shoot me almost instantly, 
not take 2 seconds to realise I am there.

>  About the only game type where difficulty level directly correlates to AI
> strength are board game programs, chess programs being the most prominent
> example. (There might be other examples in some sports and strategy games.
> I don't play many of those, so I really don't know.)

In most car racing games it's really hard to get the AI correct.  In most 
games they just give the cars lower power to simulate worse drivers, but 
that just makes them really easy to overtake on the straight parts of the 
track.  Some games make the easy AI brake earlier than the hard AI, but 
again once you know this they are easy to beat.  AFAIK no racing game 
actually simulates very well how real drivers are better than others.  There 
is a quote from some racing driver, which states that anybody can drive a 
car fast in a straight line, and anybody can drive a car fast in a curve, 
the skilful bit is the transition between the two.

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