Sometimes we hear a game, we're hyped. We look at the trailers and the story and it look great.
But moments in after you start, maybe 1 hour or 2, and you start to feel... "it's a lemon!"

One game per reply to keep the post brief:)

I'll go first.

ARK Survival. The trailers look great and the graphics were marvelous. But the game was just so buggy. I couldn't take it. It tried hard to deliver but it was obvious that the game wasn't well polished. Much of a let down imo.

Kingdom Hearts 2. 3 hours in and you're barely finishing tutorials... at which point i was burned out and didn't care.

Tomb Raider (2013) might be one of the most shallow games I've ever invested my time in. Utterly pointless and without a soul, it feels like it has been focus-grouped to death. The gaming equivalent of Marvel movies under Disney.

tbh I sometimes wonder if I don't regret having played any games at all, must have wasted years of my life on that. Should probably have done something more constructive, like trying to have sexual intercourse with beautiful women or something of the sort.
However, if I had to narrow it down to specific games, I'd say Diablo 2 and Diablo 3...both times I only bought and played those games because a former classmate talked me into it. Didn't like the gameplay at all, had zero appeal to me, was just boring. Showed me that I'm not interested in this hack and slash multiplayer experience that is potentially open-ended...I need a single-player experience with at least somewhat decent story and a clear ending, so I can put the game away after having finished it.

Impossible Mission for the Atari 7800. . . it really is impossible. Man that burnt me up.

Diablo 3 for me, but once I sank 4 hours in and beat the story with friends, I kind of got forced to play and waste like 300+ hours :/ did not enjoy the game one bit.

Played a lot of Diablo 2 on the side to wash the bad taste. not gonna fall for Diablo 4 and that nonsense again lol.

Stalker Clear Sky
It had some good ideas with the faction wars, but overall it just seemed like a lesser version of Shadow of Chernobyl. You mostly play in the exact same areas.

Unreal 2
Painfully mediocre compared to the first game.

DayZ. Ugghhh. Worst money I ever spent on a game.

I don't know. Probably Duke Nukem Forever and its DLC, for all the obvious reasons plus the fact that the few good ideas floated in both were just kinda wasted on something so mediocre.

(I missed the memo where titles needed to be arbitrarily put in bold tags, I guess)

Devil May Cry 2. I remember really just wanting more of the same as I loved the combat in the frist game some much. Well I remember buying it the day it came out, I think i even pre-ordered it. Went home and played the frist level, think what the hell is this crap? Went back about half a hour later to the same store and traded it right in. Clerk thought it was weird that I would do that. I did not care and am still pissed about that game all this time later.

Valkyria Revolution

Or, a great story wrapped inside a terribly broken game. Stick with the main series instead.

Without question, mobile f2p games. I never spent a cent on them, but I wasted a couple of years that I'll never get back.

Just the first that comes to mind? Definitely Diablo 2 in that case, all the hype, even people I knew still playing after many years, so eventually got around to it and... wtf's that? Mindless clickfest with nothing there for me, and no proper saving either.

Richard and Alice

I'm usually very lenient with indie games, and I've been a fan of amateur adventures made by the AGS community for a long time, but I thought this one was incredibly overhyped and actually a real stinker, much worse than many of the free AGS games. The gameplay is slow and tedious, the major part of it is walking to and fro through empty areas at crawl speed or clicking through overlong dialogues, and the story is just bleak for its own sake, I didn't get anything interesting out of it.

Icewind Dale 2 - I decied to give it a try without playing 1 because reviews stated - it's less action and more story focused. So I expected sth between Baldur's Gate and Diablo....I think I gave up on the first floor of the Ice Temple (First Chapter). Fight, sleep, fight, sleep ...meh