Annoyed us in: Daikatana (PC/N64, 2000)

Mikiko has the misfortune of starring in one of the most thoroughly thrashed and widely hated PC games of all time, but that's really the least of her problems. She's also faintly hideous, she chatters in a generically accented dragon-lady voice and tends to get stuck when trying to navigate tight spaces. Oh, and she also gets infected with a plague virus, forcing her stereotypical compatriot Superfly Johnson to carry her limp form through a hefty chunk of the game, and she eventually turns out to be Daikatana's final boss. (SPOILER ALERT: If you're one of the five people who actually still intend to play Daikatana to completion, we apologize for ruining your appreciation of its horrible plot just now.)

Above: We couldn't have said it better ourselves, HURR HURR HURRRRR

Worst of all, she has the self-preservation instinct of roughly half a gnat. On more than one occasion, we fired a proximity mine in the general direction of our enemies, only to watch helplessly as Mikiko inexplicably ran over to it, stood on top of it while it beeped at her and got herself blown up. And then we'd have to start that section of the level over again, because our heroes just couldn't bring themselves to go on without Mikiko's chatterbox observations that something smelled funny.

Annoyed us in: Grand Theft Auto III (PS2/Xbox/PC, 2001),
GTA: San Andreas (PS2/Xbox/PC, 2004)

For all its cutting-edge awesomeness, the Grand Theft Auto series has produced some remarkably annoying women over the years. GTA III gave us shrill, manipulative Maria, for example, while GTA IV introduced the twin whirlwinds of clingy desperation and soulless vanity that were Kiki Jenkins and Carmen Ortiz. But out of the series' entire cast of gangsters, lowlifes and sociopaths, none have been quite as persistently horrible as Catalina.

We were first introduced to Catalina at the beginning of GTA III, when she betrayed then-boyfriend Claude and left him for dead before going on to become the game's final boss. But her real moment came years later, in San Andreas. Here, we got the full brunt of Catalina's awful, abusive personality, learning firsthand that spending five minutes with her was about as pleasant as eating hot sand. To make matters worse, she had to go and decide that protagonist Carl "CJ" Johnson was her new boyfriend, which was really just an excuse to constantly screech at him for imagined infidelities.

Above: It says something that one of GTA's most enduring and successful villains is a woman. We're not sure what it says, exactly, but it's something

It doesn't matter that Catalina was written to be irritating - what matters is that it worked. By the time we were done with her missions, it was enough to make us want to boot up GTA III and blast her back to hell all over again.

Annoyed us in: Assassin's Creed (360/PS3/PC, 2007)

Have you played Assassin's Creed for any amount of time? Then you've probably been unlucky enough to attract the attention of one of these aggressive panhandlers. One moment, you'll be plodding slowly through the streets of Jerusalem or Acre, trying to keep a low profile, and the next, she'll be running around in front of you, determinedly getting right in your way and insisting you give her free money.

We don't know what makes this woman think that Altair, a man with a hidden face and a visible arsenal of blades, even has any money. But she's apparently convinced he has a lot of it, because she won't shut up, get out of the way or take "I'm running away from you now" for an answer. Worse, her persistent squawking tends to attract attention from guards, which in turn can blow Altair's cover.

She's a menace, a nuisance and a gargantuan pain in the ass. But if you shove her, punch her or silently knife her to death, suddenly everybody hates you. Really? We didn't see them stepping up to help her out, the callous bastards.