I'm sitting here not buying Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, but really wanting to buy Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, when suddenly it occurs to me that this is something I'd meant to check myself on the next time it occurred. Why do I feel such a white-hot need for shiny new games?

Well, of course, this title feels actually somewhat special. (Wouldn't it just?) You see, I have never owned a CoD, myself, and this could very well be one of the last iterations I'll be able to play on my good old 360. I might as well finally buy a CoD, right? Additionally, the play-style of this newest title, with its double jumps and grappling hooks and loot drops, just strikes me as, for lack of a better excuse, "what I want to play right now." It looks like Titanfall, a game whose feel I loved, but made newer and sleeker and sans Titan (to which humongoid gameplay mechanic I wasn't totally attached anyway). This new CoD both exacerbates my newfound futuristic/hyper-mobile FPS itch and promises to scratch it reeeal nice and thorough at the same time. Early reviews, for what their worth, attest to CoD:AW's delivery on this promise.

But what of my burning lust to play it right now, right RIGHT now, tonight, rather than months hence, after it's sure to have dropped fifteen or twenty bucks in price on Amazon? Why this mouthwatering urgency? Is avoiding several months' wait worth the "extra" $15 to 20?

It's a curious thing. For real. It's not just "novelty itself," like I thought it might be, that makes a game like CoD:AW seem so $60-worthy right now, but instead it's a whole mess of complex intellectual and emotional appeals, whose number just seems to grow each time I go back to make sure there aren't any more. The problem(s), apparently, is more complex than just that I'm weak to effective marketing. (Of course, that this all seems so particularized and urgent to me-here-now could just be further proof of the effectiveness of this game's marketing, but I've got no way of really commenting any further on that from this then-delusional perspective. Plus, blech.)

Here are all my knee-jerk retorts to "You should wait several months to buy the game," in no particular order:

A. I want to form my own opinion of the game right now, quickly, before the dust of public opinion settles and distorts my view of the game, like as to its contribution to the genre, its overall replay value, its inherent "goodness," etc. I have only maybe a week or two to do this, max. Why do I want to do this, why does it matter? Because. Having a personal opinion that I've made all on my own is THE key to allowing those few precious games that turn out to be truly great into what I lovingly call my Personal Pantheon. Otherwise truly great but already extensively talked-about games tend to suffer from this after-aura of what feels sort of like... sloppy seconds. Eager people get in early and form their own deep personal bonds with the game, then go and publicly gush about the game and gloss over all its hiccups and build up all these exorbitant expectations until we have to beg them to shut up, so that later when it is finally our turn to play the game, we can't help still hearing their annoying voices in or heads, their cloyingly sweet reviews, their all-but-cries of "Dibs!" on the game's lovability.

B. Imagine that your back itches, and that there is the most amazing looking back-scratcher on sale right there in front of you. Your back itches right now. But if you wait until next April, you can buy the back-scratcher for 25% off. What do you want to do? (Note: Scratching a spot that itched last year will only be satisfying if that spot still itches.)

C. I won't enjoy playing other games in the meantime. And though this issue will gradually diminish as I wind up forgetting about the game and as other even better-looking games come out, that relief will be in exchange for interest. That's sort of tragic, right? The game will obsolesce with fierce rapidity in today's ruthlessly competitive and self-aware gaming market. Even aforementioned truly great games can't help but lose a little bit of their edge once competitors have duplicated their innovations and elaborated upon them. Fun is an ever-evolving concept in video games, with revolutionary ideas only too readily becoming the new norms, and it's because of this that what was awesome last year is likely less so this year. Therefore, buy now.

D. In fact, resisting buying the game enters me into a kind of purgatorial loop. By the time the price drops on this awesome-looking new game next year, some other even more awesome-looking, even newer game will have come out, which hot new thing will in turn become the new game that I need then not to buy until its price has dropped--but whose price won't drop until yet another even-more-awesome, somehow-even-newer title comes out the following year. By this waiting-for-price-to-drop logic, I never actually wind up owning any games I want. Or if I do actually follow through on purchasing a game after its price has dropped, it's because I have gotten "lucky" and hit a drought in which no good new games have come out to supplant it, i.e., I have settled out of necessity; or if an awesome new IP has come out, then I must only be buying the now-outdated game as a means of half-alleviating the misery that is not owning that which is newer and better. ... In no scenario do I actually own the game I want. I only end up with what I "need," if I end up with anything at all. Thus the wait-for-price-to-drop logic is less a healthy economical argument to me than evidence of a detached, if financially responsible, mindset; it is mostly just pennywise advice that only someone who didn't like video games much to begin with could appreciate.

E. I'm a goddamn adult and I can goddamn afford it. Plus, I should be savoring these last few years of pre-paternal free time, indulging in great video games while I still have the hours required to properly enjoy them. Right? (I just got back from a weekend of babysitting my brother's brand new baby son, and the gravity of the evanescence of my non-fatherhhood is riding particularly heavy on me right now.)

In other words, I think I hate the video game industry, that it does this to me, gets me hooked on flashy new mechanics, brings me to such excruciating, introspective, personal-finance-pondering halts with such predictable regularity. But lord knows I still want to play me some Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, out now on all major consoles, available for that only just unreasonable $59.99 (plus tax) for instant download on XBLA, tonight, here on my TV in front of me, in the room with me, this lovely package-deal of itch powder plus back-scratcher, all I've got to do is hit the A button a few times and poof I'm sixty-some-odd bucks poorer and but playing it. How can I not?

Well, like this, apparently. Huh. It's already bedtime, and I haven't hit the A button yet. Guess I'm sleeping on it. One day at a time, my brothers and sisters. One day at a time.

(PS -- My money-conscious girlfriend suggested I restrict myself to one major video game purchase per quarter. Thus my crisis is reduced from one of 'whether' to one of 'which,' which is admittedly a nice load off. I have stuck, more or less, to this approach for the last year or so, and it's worked up until now. But Fall is when lots of big juicy titles drop all at once, and it's just about impossible to pick only one Fall release I want the "most.". Smash Bros. and CoD:AW are not comparable by any reasonable metric to me, so how do I reasonably decide which is more essential? I have no answer to this, of course, and it's why I find myself here scrawling at length about the issue just to keep from having to really face it.)

(PPS -- This is not meant to be a manifesto in favor of buying CoD:AW, or its shiny, innovative, brand-new ilk. Quite the contrary, I write all this as a means of stepping outside my delusions for a second. I'm venting them all, getting them all down--for science! It's nice to see them all up there, together, you know?, trying their pathetic (if hopefully somewhat compelling) level best. It makes me feel strong.)