Puzzle Fighter 2 is a bit of a cult favourite among both puzzle game fans and Street Fighter aficionados. Yet it is also the puzzle equivalent of Mario Kart with its obscene catch-up logic. You can be chaining gems together and absolutely schooling your buddies but, with every combo you make, you give your opponent more gems that they can use against you. If you time it wrong and let up for even a second you’ll find the game flipping into reverse and destroying you. In terms of humiliation it is right up there with the blue shell, and earns Puzzle Fighter 2 the title of the fifth puzzle game that is most likely to make you want to tear your hair out.

Discworld Noir has a special place in my heart, and is one of the few really old school games that has made this list. The atmosphere and snappy dialogue made Noir an instant fan favourite and even though the puzzles were generally of a pretty standard difficulty, there was one section that had me on the back foot for the entirety of my youth. And the solution to this problem lay in one sodding letter. When you reach this point in the game you only need to return to the protagonist, Luton’s, office and find a letter that has been posted under his door. The problem is that the game had such a gloomy and dark graphical palette that the letter was almost impossible to spot. Once I found the letter the rest of the game fell into place and it has since become one of my favourite point and click adventure games, but that one bloody letter was enough to really drive me round the bend.

Tetris is one of those games that all kids who grew up in the early 90′s will hold dear to their hearts. Anyone who lived within a 20 mile radius of a Gameboy has probably had some kind of exposure to Tetris, and it is also because of this that we can all share in the same frustration that this game can engender within us. The most annoying failure is the one that comes out of nowhere. You can be so near to earning that high score in Tetris, but a single lapse in concentration will see your screen get filled up with squares in seconds. What’s worse is you have to watch this all happen while you are, more often than not, powerless to stop it. Not many games can get gamers quite as riled up in the same way as Tetris can.

Anyone who purchased an Xbox 360 during the first few years of the console’s cycle will know what I’m talking about here. Hexic HD was the little arcade game that came pre-loaded onto your console for free. With the novelty of Achievements in the air, many thought Hexic would be a good place to start their never-ending quest to increase their GamerScore. Little did they know that unlocking the achievements in Hexic would not be for the fainthearted. Many hours were wasted trying to match starflowers to earn an elusive black pearl. And don’t even get me started on the Achievement that required you to match six black pearls

I’m cheating a bit here by referring to StarCraft as a puzzle game when it’s considered the archetypal real time strategy game, but it is a frustrating brain teaser all the same. Have you ever tried playing the original StarCraft online recently? Even worse, have you ever tried playing StarCraft against a Korean player as of late? Few horrors can quite compare to such a fate. It wasn’t just a loss I encountered, it was more of a total humiliation. I still have nightmares about the experience, and I’m sure any sane man would have a similar reaction to such a horrific tactical lashing. Keep your StarCraft escapades amongst your close friends until you’re good enough to compete. Maybe then you’ll be safe. Maybe.