I get excited about a lot of upcoming games. With Amazon’s new discounts on most pre-order titles, it has caused me to be a bit cavalier on pre-orders (just when I had finally been getting better about not pre-ordering so many games!).

Most games I pre-order, I have a strong understanding of the game and I already know, more or less, that I will likely enjoy that particular experience. But now, occasionally, I’ve been pre-ordering certain titles I’m not certain about (even if I’ve been keeping up with their development) and this has usually worked out just fine.

Until today.

Maybe.

I have a soft spot for Deep Silver titles. I know Dead Island and Dead Island: Riptide weren’t technically great games, but I had so much fun with them (and will again when the remastered collection releases in a couple of weeks). When I saw that Homefront: The Revolution was being published by Deep Silver, I thought, sure! Why not? I bet I have fun with it.

A while back, a friend gave me a code for the beta on Xbox One. I was all excited to try it out. It took forever to download, and after it was all installed and ready, I tried, unsuccessfully, to get into a session. I tried many times over the course of two days. I was never able to play it at all.

That should have been a warning sign.

I kept my pre-order, even though I’d considered cancelling it several times. It wasn’t until yesterday that I really began to regret that decision.

I was laying down most of yesterday (I was feeling wicked ill) and during one of my waking hours, I watched the Test Chamber on Game Informer of the first hour of Homefront: The Revolution. At first I thought it didn’t look too bad (the game, not the graphics). It was a bit more violent than I was expecting, but given the story, it didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility.

The longer the Test Chamber went on, the more concerned I became. It didn’t help that the two people playing it were actively expressing concerns over how the gameplay handled and that it didn’t feel good.

I started to wish I had left my copy in the plastic. In my excitement over getting my new game from UPS, I opened it up…before I saw the Test Chamber. It was one of the rare times I felt like I’d actually made a mistake in buying a game. I have already considered trading it in and cutting my losses. Of course I will give it my level best before doing so, but, after seeing the first hour being played, I am a little concerned. I wish I had cancelled the pre-order and waited. But I didn’t. So the best thing I can do is try it out, and, worst case scenario, I will trade it in in short order.

Have you ever pre-ordered a game and instantly regretted it? Were you able to return it? Or did you have to cut your losses and either trade it in somewhere or just hang on to it?