(PC, Take 2, £35)

Despite having been in existence for 20 years (the same time it took music to get from Doris Day to the Sex Pistols), the videogames business is still the most conservative of all the mass-market leisure cultures. (In fact, it’s taken more or less the opposite path to all the others – since the anything-goes days of the early 80s, the range of game styles has dramatically narrowed to the point where today, practically every title released can be very comfortably pigeonholed into one of five categories - driving game, Doom game, strategy wargame, platform game or fighting game.) 98% of games are targeted directly at either kiddies or geeks, with anything approaching thought-provoking, grown-up content being treated, by both media and public, like a smelly leper with a handful of dirty syringes.

So it’s unsurprising that the tame schlock-horror controversies presented by Postal have already seen it splattered across the pages of the News Of The World, and subjected to all manner of tutting and finger-wagging by even the most radical elements of the games press. (A distinction, incidentally, that’s right up there with "even the most sensitive of Italian riot police".)

Essentially a videogame cross between Falling Down and Hard Boiled, the game deposits the player’s character (presumably that poster-boy of psychotic insanity, the disgruntled postal worker, although the game doesn’t bother with any kind of expository introduction) in the heart of redneck country with a bulging armoury and a grudge against humanity, and leaves him to wander around, aimlessly massacring everyone he meets. This being redneck country, of course, everyone’s carrying their own heavy ordnance (except some innocent holidaymakers, who you can use as human shields), so the scene quickly comes to resemble dinnertime at Roy Keane’s house.

As far as outrageous shock potential goes, it’s about on a par with a James Bond movie, although the cretinous "witticisms" occasionally uttered by your character do their best to ruin the otherwise beautifully-constructed atmosphere. (The graphics are a treat, abstract and cartoony in rotting fleshtones, and the sound is superb, all heartbeats and headvoices and Psycho-shower-scene orchestral stabs.) And it seems rather less offensive to us than something like Syndicate Wars, where you behave in much the same way, only for the good of corporate finance rather than simply through being mad in the head, and which no-one got all worked up about.

As a game, Postal is no better than average. As a step towards the day when videogames might become as interesting as movies or books or records as well as as much fun, it should be welcomed with open arms.

FROGGER

(Playstation, Hasbro, £40)

Retro is big news in gaming at the moment, and the lack of interesting human beings in the business has meant that developers have reverted to making game characters the stars. Frogger (a frog – amusing personality traits: none. Life ambition: crossing the road) first showed up in arcades in 1981, and has lain dormant ever since. Now he’s been revived, blown up into 3D, and sent off to cross not only roads, but some swamps and gardens too. It’s very nicely done, although the modern obsession with big fat graphics means that much of the time you’re so close to the action you can’t actually see where you’re going. But that’s progress for you.

VIRUS

(PC, Telstar, £xx.xx)

In a little space like this, it’s difficult to know which of Virus’s gimmicks to focus on – the fact that it was funded by the Israeli Ministry Of Defence, the way it takes place inside your PC (both literally and thematically), using your own directory structure and files as locations, or that it’s the first game to attempt to combine the PC’s two most popular genres, the Doom-style shoot-‘em-up and the Command & Conquer strategy wargame. In the end, though, the game is so sluggish, incomprehensible and unwelcoming to play that all three of these innovative and commendable features are rendered entirely irrelevant. Phew.

IGNITION

(PC, Virgin, £xx.xx)

Ignition, on the other hand, eschews such fancy trickery in favour of a straightforward race game. Unconventionally using the 3D overhead view previously only seen in Micro Machines 3, you control one of eight vehicles ranging from police car to a school bus, in a series of rough-and-tumble cross-country races where barging your opponents off cliffs and into the sea attracts active encouragement rather than licence endorsements. While the gameplay is thinner than Happy Shopper toilet tissue, Ignition looks lovely, feels different and, most importantly, it’s a whole bunch of fun. In fact, it’s just plain lovable.

CROC

(Playstation, Fox Interactive, £40)

NAMCO MUSEUM ENCORE

(Namco, Playstation, Y5,800)