If there's something that winds me up about modern day games, it's their insistence on playing through the game once to unlock the highest difficulty level. Personally I've gotten into the habit of assuming that if you don't select the highest difficulty level in a game then you miss out on a significant portion of the content. For particularly large games, knowing that I'll have to play through them twice, once on a high difficulty and again on an even higher one, literally makes me despair. I really enjoy squeezing out every ounce of content I can from a game, but to go to such lengths, especially in narrative-driven games where a second playthrough is never as enjoyable as the first, seems like more effort than it's worth. All of this could be avoided if the highest difficulty is available from the start of the game.

So, what's your take on unlocking higher difficulties, or unlocking full stop?