You've saved up, endured all the trailers, found the best price on your much hankered-for new game and then WHAM. Some 13-year-old Halo whizzkid kills you in the first ten seconds.
We've done the rounds of the Huffington Post office gamers, and come up with our list of most hellishly frustrating games and gaming moments.
Halo is one of the single most frustrating games. Play on the lower levels and a good gamer can get through, no trouble. Max it to "Evolved" and multi-player online and you're toast - usually quite quickly, by some young punk 20 years your junior.
Levelling up in a role play game and then dying randomly before you can save is a major frustration. Hi, RuneScape. Why bother accumulating all that guff?
F1 2011 is meant to be a great game. But all too often you aim for a great result, and employ a great strategy, only for a competitor to have a crash into you and take you out. So annoying!
Okami is a lovely game with super cute characters. But we've never got more than three quarters of the way through because there's a bug that just kills you randomly. Who knows what the last quarter of this game looks like? We've never gone back.
PC gamers are meant to be the hardcore elite. So when we've thought 'hmm, I'll stop being so softcore and buy the PC version' only to find OUR PC IS NOT POWERFUL ENOUGH, that just makes us swing straight back to console. Monkey Ball on Wii never let us down.
Being frustrated by levels, silly bugs and unnecessary deaths are not new. But failing because of bandwidth is.
The rise in online gaming through services like OnLive are fine, but if you live in the Brecon Beacons and you want to play, you may as well take a shortcut to punching the wall and leave the machine alone.
Old games are good - for irritation. Who hasn't had a nervous breakdown playing this underwater level in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
We haven't for some years though. And looking at its quaint old-school design now just makes us feel nostalgic - even for the pain.
Our bonus frustration, making this a sneaky top nine is FIFA. Anyone who has put any time into that game will attest to the frustration when your players randomly smash into each other to let the opposition striker through to score. The blood still boils.
Naturally, this list just grows and grows. I think we'll be adding to it in the future. What is your most annoying gaming moment or most frustrating game?