FOMSS, or Fear of Missing Something Syndrome, is something that many of us encounter in different areas of our lives. Sometimes it’s an event, sometimes a movie. In my case, looking at this fall’s smorgasbord of games, I slowly came to realize that I’d never have the free time to play all these games. So while I’ll be able to play some, I’ve been forced to avoid others that I’d really rather have the time to play. Choosing which games to play and which to miss can be tough, and it’s odd that I feel a need to make excuses to the Internet as to why I haven’t bought every game that interests me. But here they are.
I often don’t make the final decision on whether to buy a game until seconds before its release. This was certainly the case with Spore and LittleBigPlanet, both of which I’d planned to buy, and neither of which I’ll be playing any time soon. While I might consider buying them six months from now, perhaps on the used market, previews and reviews definitely affect my buying decisions. Videos of LittleBigPlanet’s gameplay just didn’t grab me. One of its largest selling points is community-created content, a feature that might make the game more appealing to others as it will extend the hours of play, but personally, I don’t just have the extra time to put into a game – I’d rather play shorter, content-dense games like Portal or Fahrenheit. As for Spore, the reviews made it sound much more like The Sims than I’d originally thought. While my wife seems really excited about Spore – we may buy a copy for her – I’d rather spend my precious free time playing the fantastic Okami.

And the amount of time I’m putting into Okami is the main reason I’m planning on not buying my number one Playstation 3 choice for the fall. Dead Space really looks fantastic. Ever since I played Resident Evil 2, I’ve been looking for another game to recreate that experience for me. Resident Evil 4 didn’t do it, Eternal Darkness didn’t quite do it, Bioshock didn’t do it, Condemned didn’t do it, and none of the Silent Hill games did it. Some of those were great games, but they weren’t the kind of survival horror I’d been looking for. I was really hoping that Dead Space could be that game. But the descriptions that I’ve heard have placed it much more in the Bioshock camp, and Bioshock was a huge disappointment for me. Some nice twists, but the game’s single moral choice was presented as a five star restaurant dinner when what we actually got was a salisbury steak TV dinner, and death in Bioshock was handled as poorly as it was in Prey. I haven’t seen death mishandled that badly since Bill and Ted took their bogus journey.

Mass Effect, Crysis, Far Cry 2, and Gears of War are all titles which at one point I was really excited to play. But Mass Effect and Gears of War were originally XBox 360 exclusives, and by the time they were released for the PC, I was no longer excited. I’ll probably try out Mass Effect at some point, but Gears of War I’ll skip. Crysis I didn’t pick up because I was afraid it’d turn my graphics board into a smoking ruin, and Far Cry 2 I’ll be waiting on because… hey! Fallout 3! I can definitely see myself picking up Mass Effect and Far Cry 2 on Steam in 2009.

Brandon’s review of De Blob really made me want to run out and buy a copy of the game. And Boom Blox got similarly awesome reviews. Alas, I’ll likely never play either unless a future version of myself gains a mutant time traveling ability and returns with a winning lotto ticket so as to subsidize my gaming habit.

A lot of people made a big deal about N+, but since it was an XBox Live Arcade offering, I never got a chance to play. So when they announced its release on the DS I was excited. Even better that it cost less than some bottles of wine I’ve bought. But in the end, I weighed my immense capacity for frustration against the descriptions and reviews I’d heard, and decided not to buy it for the same reasons I’d foregone Zack and Wiki.

There are a number of somewhat older titles I’m still interested in picking up at some point if I miraculously find myself with free time. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is a game I’ll more than likely end up buying during the next DS drought, and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn for the Wii might serve to scratch an RPG itch should I suddenly develop one. Neverwinter Nights 2 for the PC is a game I view with both interest and trepidation. The last time I installed a Neverwinter Nights game, it consumed more than a year of my life. That’s more time than I spent with Oblivion, although the majority of that time was spent in the game editor. Should I muster enough bravery to ever purchase Neverwinter Nights 2, I’ll need to make a solemn vow to myself not to open the game editor and never, ever to view those terrible seductive scripting tools.

I’d probably be extremely interested in Fable 2 if I owned an XBox 360, but as it stands, if Dead Rising and Eternal Sonata weren’t enough to get me to buy a new console, nothing short of a 360 exclusive on Psychonauts 2 will be enough. And speaking of Dead Rising and Eternal Sonata, both are being re-released on consoles I own this fall. And I’m skipping both of them.

There are a number of games that I probably should have skipped, but didn’t. For instance, as a huge fan of HomestarRunner.com, I picked up Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People as soon as it came out. Sadly, I’d forgotten how bad I am at point-and-click adventure games, and I didn’t get very far before I got stuck. The Witcher was another huge disappointment. It had distinctly last-gen models and combat slightly less engaging than that in Diablo or Dungeon Siege.

So which games am I not skipping? In a word: Fallout 3. I guess that was a word and a number, isn’t it? I absolutely loved the first two games, and have been a fan of the series since Wasteland. I only hope that Fallout 3 continues tradition of black humor and post-apocolyptic kickassiness. Huh? What? Kickassiness is a perfectly crumulent word. Avoision is too. Bite me.

Mirror’s Edge is another title I’ll be watching closely. It looks pretty cool. If I’m not blown away by the reviews, I might skip the PS3 version in November and wait until 2009 to pick up the PC version. Other future titles on my radar: Street Fighter IV, Dragon Age: Origins, Heavy Rain, Tenchu 4, Resident Evil 5, and Starcraft 2.