Not instant, cuz I bought it long before playing it, but I was one of the dumbasses who preordered No Man's Sky.

After hours of "maybe this is just a dud planet" I finally accepted that 90% of what they advertised was a massive and very deliberate lie.

They've come a long way to make it right since then, but that doesn't excuse their initial deception.

Lesson learned: do not pre-order, ever. Wait for at least a month or so post-release and make a purchasing decision based on reviews.

Spore

nothing like advertised

MS Pac-Man on Atari 2600

Spent 2 weeks' allowance. Game was crap.

YES I AM STILL SALTY

RDR2

Cyberpunk 2077 only because it was busted as fuck on PS4.

Now it's a great game that I have over 1000 hours in but when it released holy fucking broken, batman. It's the only game I ever refunded in the PS store.

Starbound, it's Terraria but made with unpaid labor.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

Loved the graphics in the trailer and intro. Then hated it immediately after the first battle.

Elden Ring. I knew I shouldn't have. I already knew from playing DS1 that I did not like these games. But it was different, they said. It's the most accessible yet they said. The lore is great, they said. And that's mostly true except for the last one, it's lore and story is dogshit. Hell, they couldn't even translate correctly what very little was there in regards to Ranni, and she has the best ending. Speaking of endings, holy fuck, what a shit show those short and recycled endings are. Anyways, I paid full price for this... thing, and that's what I really regret. Slap a 50% off sale on it, and, sure, it's totally worth it. But I won't ever be buying the DLC or doing another playthrough.

RV There Yet.

Not because it's bad. I just get motion sickness badly. Twin bought it for us to play together, I play for 15 minutes go "oh no" and refund time it was!

Payday 3.

Killzone. Teenage me bought into the "Halo-killer" hype and spent $50 on it (money that had taken me months to gather), only to get a mediocre shooter with a forgettable story, boring characters, and gameplay reminiscent of budget titles from the previous gen. The only good part was the enemy art design, and it turns out that was lifted straight from a famous anime.

Weirdly enough, Halo: Master Chief Edition

I'd only ever played the demo for the original Halo and a few multiplayer games on other peoples' consoles, but I've absorbed enough of the Halo lore from various sci-fi YouTube channels, trailers, cinematics, etc., that I found it pretty fascinating.

But the gameplay? Extremely not my cup of tea. I found the weapons very unsatisfying to use, (I grew up around Unreal Tournament's rocket launcher) the enemies too bullet-spongey, and the environments and encounters too samey and uninteresting.

Honestly, I just want a walking simulator that takes me through the story lol

Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I loved the original FF7, but the big budget cinematic style is just not for me. I stopped playing about 2 hours in I think.

Not a game specifically, but Seekers of the Storm DLC for Risk of Rain 2.

They didnt haven't to break Loader like that. :( I still miss that game. Refunded and stopped playing it. Gearbox sucks.

I remember regretting asking for Black & White as a gift.

I did like it, but they made it seem more complex than it was so I was disappointed.

I think even at the time I had heard about Peter Molyneux’s penchant for overpromising, but that was when he had still made some games people liked.

Metroid: Other M

Overwatch. Not a huge fan of fps, but even less of a fan of pvp team games. Someone told me it had a single player story mode, at least I got digital rewards from it for WoW.

Code Vein. My enthusiasm for souls like game fall off a cliff.

I don't know about instant, but despite picking it up at an all time low sale of $7 the closest I'm getting is GRIME. I kind of feel like I've bought a budget Silksong when that game is one I've stayed away from for a reason.

Don't get me wrong: GRIME is not a bad game. If you like Metroidvania Soulslikes you'll probably love it. Especially if you want a challenge. I think I'm just not good enough at video games to play this, especially parrying. The game really seems to force you to really parry 90% of the attacks, including from bosses. After I realised the first major boss was both a 2v1 and had a second health bar and instantly one-shot me after I missed a parry in the second phase I just took a break from it and haven't had a desire to boot it up again.

I might still give it another go, but it's getting more unlikely by the day.

couple of things.

first: Star Citizen. Hell I don't think I even bought it just "pledged" to is. so I "bought" the starter pack or whatever it was and...there was nothing to do. fly around, dock, get out, walk around, that's it. I felt like such an idiot because I had read all the crap about, I knew it was a scam, but there was just some perverted curiosity involved.

second: not so much a game but an "accessory": The Sega CD Memory Card. This was from when I was a kid. I was stupid. for my birthday I wanted a Sega CD Memory Card because for some stupid reason I was convinced that it would allow me to save the ENTIRE Sega CD games I rented to the memory card so I could have a bunch of games on the card. I have no idea why I believed this but sure enough for my birthday my parents bought it for me and surprise surprise it did not do what I thought it did. I was instantly disappointed and upset. I think it was because I read in like an EGM that it allowed you to "save your games" and I interpreted that as save the ENTIRE game not just your progress.

Sleeping Dogs, on PS4 specifically. It has a bug that won't let you complete the missions involving taking photos.
Couldn't fix it and the company went under, so no more bug fixes incoming.

An acquaintance at work got me to try Welcome to the Game. I'm not a time management guy and I don't enjoy streamer-horror games. Was a pretty quick refund but I wish I could have found something else in common with the guy.

Marvel Midnight Suns for me. Bought it because it was from the maker of XCom. I think I only fought a couple of small battles in 3 hours of play because I was mostly running through a forest and googling what the best response was when talking to people. Realized there was so much of this extra crap and I hated it, then realized I was outside the refund window.

X-Men vs Street Fighter for the PlayStation. I had many hours of fun in the arcade using Zangief and Dhalsim to crush people who played Ryu/Ken/Akuma combos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men_vs._Street_Fighter

The PlayStation version includes a code that allows players to compete in "pseudo-tag team matches", provided that each player uses their opponent's starting character as their partner. For example, if Player 1 is controlling Ryu and Player 2 is controlling Wolverine, then Player 1's partner will be Wolverine and Player 2's partner will be Ryu.

Fuck a bunch of that noise.

Alone in the Dark from 2008.

I think I played like 15 minutes of it. It was awful, controls were awful, camera was probably the worst from any game I can remember, nothing like its OG counterpart.