Ninja Gaiden Reboot
In all honesty, any entry from the Ninja Gaiden series could have made this list. The original 8-bit trilogy might have been excused for its absurd difficulty, given that it was perhaps developed at a time when developers were unsure quite how high to set the bar, but the rebooted titles on Xbox continued the madness with two 3D hack and slash games that redefined the meaning of frustration. In fact, the fact the first one was so difficult that many gamers found themselves struggling to even defeat the first boss.
At the time, Ninja Gaiden was lauded as the pinnacle of action gaming, an instant classic and a genre defining action-adventure title. But only the most talented gamers were able to cope with its combat mechanics, requiring precision attacks in combination with complex block and parry manoeuvres.
As opposed to the original 8-bit Ninja Gaiden games that featured maze-like level design, a lack of save points and tough platforming, the rebooted game’s difficulty stems from mindbogglingly hard enemy attack patterns. Each enemy requires careful study, especially the almost obnoxiously tough boss fights that are so unrelenting that most gamers capitulated long before getting anywhere close to completion.