It was whilst musing over some random slice of YouTube, killing time on a generally sleepy day, that I suddenly realised just what an impatient bastard I’d become.

The catalyst to this new found realisation was a 5 second timer counting down to the point where I could ‘skip this ad’. Five seconds! What the hell had happened to me?

You see, I’m one of those long in the tooth gamers, one of the ones that has sat for five minutes and way beyond when waiting for a game to load in the bygone days of the ZX Spectrum. And even then sometimes the game would fail at the last moment and, with just the slightest grimace, I’d try all over again, and sometimes again again.

I’ve sat for hours typing code from magazines into various machines in keen anticipation of the wonderful gaming delight that no doubt lay ahead, only to find that somewhere in the reams of code I’d made a mistake and would have to start again or scan the lot for a solution…and I happily (relatively happily) did so.

Five seconds! Five measly seconds and this modern age version of myself was fuming.

I had become not only an impatient bastard, I had also become a spoilt bastard!

Now I’m going slightly off track here, but it was the self-acknowledgment of my impatient spoildness (sometimes I invent words too) that led me further down the path of what being a gamer today is all about and in particular how we gamers have so much information readily available at the click of a mouse.

No matter what snippet of gaming obscurity you seek, it’s out there somewhere.

New games, old games, new tech, lo-tech, trailers, walkthroughs, reviews, previews, interviews and everything besides is all available from numerous sources in mere seconds. An avalanche of information if you like, cascading down the mountain to land slap bang in the middle of living rooms across the world.

Then from this thought another little voice chipped in with the words: “Is it too much?”

And if I’m perfectly honest I had to answer that “sometimes, it is indeed too much.” At this point you’d be right in thinking that I was basically having a conversation with myself, but in my defence at least I had agreed with myself and not started an argument that would only have spiralled into some sort of beating up my inner Tyler Durden in a Fight Club style kind of thing, oh, erm…insert spoiler alert just before ‘spiralled’…sorry.

Now, if you’ll just step with me a moment back through the swirling mists of time I’ll explain my thinking.

(Cue the Hovis music)

When I was a lad things were much simpler and vastly different when it came to hearing about and casting an eye over new games.

Gaming wasn’t the global phenomenon it is today, it was by and large a solo experience involving Commodores, Spectrums, the odd Amstrad, a whole load of cassettes and a heap more patience. The internet was a mere pipe dream and finding information on upcoming games was, for me at least, done exclusively via the pages of a magazine, or as time progressed, sat in my school uniform before the joy that was Gamesmaster.

Even when the likes of Nintendo and Sega entered the fray, for most kids my age the only way to hear about new games or gaze at screenshots was the faithful magazine. There were no trailers to whet the appetite, no wealth of reviews to gauge an overall average, no forums to debate the pros and cons of the latest triple A title, no fanboys…wait, fanboys did still exist but the console (or computer) wars were fought on the school playgrounds and less people got burnt.

Now I know that sounds bloody awful and the whippersnappers amongst us are trying to stop their heads spinning just thinking about it, but in comparison to what we have today the gaming news landscape was undoubtedly a much more sparse place to visit.

But it wasn’t entirely a bad thing.

I say that because as much as I love to browse the latest trailers and online news for what’s to come in my much loved pastime, I sometimes wish there were things I could have unseen.

In this day and age it’s almost impossible not to have seen too much of a game before we even have it in our mitts. And this means some of the surprises, shocks and moments of pure jaw-dropping awe are lost as we’ve already watched someone else playing them or clumsily read about them on some forum. Back in the heyday of the glossy gaming mag this never happened.

Most recently I had become aware, by means I forget, that Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons had a sad ending and sure enough when the moment struck and the emotional buttons should have been hammered like Animal at his drum kit, the impact was considerably softened. I’d already known too much before embarking on the journey…oh, erm, spoiler alert again…sorry.

And now as I await the arrival of a number of potentially exciting titles how am I shaping up?

I’ve already gazed upon Infamous: Second Son too much, Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes ditto and numerous others besides. Titanfall? Yep, although I don’t actually own an Xbox One yet I already feel like I’ve played the game.

If it’s not on YouTube or IGN it’s being discussed in forums or streamed via Twitch or it’s finding other mediums to relentlessly seep into my domain and nestle snugly in my mind ready to pop out just as the heart-wrenching scene unfolds to announce, ‘oh, you remember this, that annoying kid on UStream was playing it, guess you probably should have looked away’.

I keep telling myself, ‘don’t do it, turn away, don’t click the link, heed the spoiler warning,’ but I’m weak and need to feed the thirst for more gaming knowledge, like some shambling zombie creature perched before the screen mumbling, ‘gaaammess…’

The temptation is too great. But I vow that I shall find the willpower, it needs to be something I haven’t already over-indulged in and therefore I have picked that gargantuan colossus of Playstation gaming known as Uncharted. For the fourth in this series I’m going in virtually blind. No trailers, no gameplay, no opinions, no reviews. Every moment of whatever is in store will be relished, savoured and unexpected. It won’t be easy but the payoff will hopefully be huge.

I urge you to pick a game and do the same.

Even if it’s just for one upcoming game, force yourself into a complete media blackout or just read one preview and one review before taking the plunge. Ignore the bright lights of the trailer, give the middle finger to the gameplay footage and in the words of the Grange Hill gang, ‘just say no’ to the lure of the forum spoilers (yeah I did say Grange Hill, I’m old).

It’ll be like you’ve stepped into your own personal De’Lorean with Doc Brown and gone Back to the Past. Back to a time when gaming was in its infancy, games journalism was a fine art, screenshots were to be pawed at and, in exceptional circumstances, drooled over, and games never failed to raise smiles and tears in just the right places.

Just one game, do it, and thank me later.