Video games these days are way, WAY fairer than they used to be. You guys are quoting all these really recent games - but it used to be a lot worse than it is now.
Almost all of the first generation of FPS games had a lot of pits where you'd fall down and be trapped forever, but if you lived through the actual fall itself then you couldn't die. Too bad if you saved your game down there and it was the only save game you had... back to the very start of the game for you, no matter how many levels you were through it... this was also before splash damage weapons were really common so you could rarely suicide with them, either.
Who remembers the "jail" in early 3D sandbox pioneer Mercenary? The absolute pinnacle of unfair gaming. The jail was a room that you could get into, but not out of, and there was no way of telling which door would lead there until you went through it (some were marked with a big X but some were not). And you couldn't save or load your game, either. The end, thanks for playing.
The funniest unfair one was the "Trumbles" in 3D space trader game Elite (EVE's primary template was Elite, not Freelancer, Privateer, I-War, X3 or any of that other rubbish). At one point in the game Elite you'd be approached by a traveling salesman selling Trumbles. If you buy them they start filling up your ship and eventually they crawl right over your cockpit view and interface so you can't see - and there's no way to get rid of them! If you didn't have a save game from before you said yes to the guy, then you go waaaay back to "harmless" rating and 100 credits.
Randomised plasmids? One shot kills? You don't know how good you've got it.