[Professor S]

My gut reaction to this was "heresy!", but after thinking about it, this is a pretty good idea.

We can all agree that the difficulty levels in most games have been toned down... a lot. Trial and error gaming is almost dead, and even most shooters are so forgiving that that you can beat the game in one sitting because you can take a clip full of bullets without dying or have a Wolverine-esque healing factor. This was done in response to the caual gamer not wanting to dedicate so much time to beating a game, and the developers were right for making the change in response.

This feature might allow for developers to crank the difficulty back up, but allow for more casual gamers to "skip" sections they get stuck on and still complete te game, exprience the story, have fun and try those sections again if they like.

Plus, I like the possibility of giving the gamer a certain number of "skips". This will make the player think carefully about when they want to burn a skip in case they need it later. Kind of like time outs in football.