4. Sigma (2007, PlayStation 3)

Tomonobu Itagaki is allegedly a difficult man, who also loves making exceedingly difficult games. Any of the iterations of post 2004 Ninja Gaiden, whether it's the original version, Ninja Gaiden Black (both of which appeared on Xbox) or this; the next-gen remake for the PS3, they're all as hard as titanium nails. Despite this salient fact, it's actually quite hard to hate Ninja Gaiden since the game has a tight and responsive control system that reward players for having a degree of skill. Slaying demonic ninjas is enormous fun if you're any good at the game - sadly, we're not. What makes Ninja Gaiden Sigma frustrating, are the times when an enemy manages to get a sneaky hit past your guard and drain a quarter of your health bar in one go. When this happens it suddenly becomes extremely easy to hate Ninja Gaiden, for all the wrong reasons.

We much prefer Ninja Gaiden II on for its brutality and viscera as limbs go flying in flurries of gore and legless ninjas claw their way along the floor in a vain attempt to bite your toes off. It's a little more forgiving than its predecessor too, although the less said about the trio of final bosses that must be defeated without the luxury of being able to save your game, the better. Then again, the less said about Sigma's tooth-bending boss encounters, the better too. Horrible.

5. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (2006, 360)

Like Ninja Gaiden, isn't necessarily a bad game, just another extremely, unconditionally frustrating one. You see, protagonist Wayne Holden is not just a bland, stone-faced bore but he's also ridiculously annoying to control. The trouble is he's far too slow, clumsy and weak, running along as if trudging through molasses. Traipsing through a foot of snow amid a merciless blizzard, Wayne's pace is completely understandable, but running along solid ground at the same speed? Sorry Capcom, but you've lost us. Drawn out animations make even the most simple of tasks a real slog and when you're facing enemies that are much larger, quicker and more fearsome than your outgunned self, you're in real trouble. Especially when after an impact, Wayne finds himself locked in a slow falling animation leaving you helplessly agape as more projectiles rain down turning the screen into a blurred mess of confusion and disorientation. You might as well load your last checkpoint whenever you hit the deck, because you can bet good money that Wayne won't be getting up anytime soon. Wayne is, as a good friend pointed out, "a hate conduit."

Lost Planet looks stunning and the smoke and fire effects are lovely when you're not on the receiving end. Having to constantly collect the orangey bits from the middle of a Jaffa cake to keep Wayne from freezing to death is a major bugbear too, even when you're indoors or deep in the bowels of a volcano. Surely, of all places you can forget about the cold, a volcano with its floes of white-hot molten rock is one of them. No? Oh, okay then, Capcom. Grr!

6. Warrior Within (2004, PlayStation 2)

Forget for a moment that this sequel to 2003's Sands of Time completely did away with the vibrancy and evocative sense of time and place that defined the series' nascent reinvention. And forget that the Prince was transformed into a moody Goth teenager with his own crummy, thrash metal soundtrack. What continues to stick in our mind about Warrior Within is not the ill-advised change in direction the developer decided to take, but the wayward, recalcitrant camera, the dark, samey locations and the constant, grinding, backtracking. While travelling back and forth through time transforming the environments was a nice touch, there's no excuse for the number of times you were made to retrace your steps and go back and forth to the same places over and over again.

Add to this some iffy combat, a ropey storyline and patience-wearing escapes from the dark clutches of the rampaging Dahaka, (guardian of the timeline) where the camera would switch angles without warning causing you to accidentally run into a gaping chasm, and you have the perfect recipe for a truly annoying game.