Stuart Campbell's never been very good at headlines.

It's not all that long ago that the idea of a magazine like The Face having a videogames page at all would have seemed a completely laughable notion. These days, thanks largely to the Playstation, things are different - games are a legitimate cultural force, and you can routinely devote hours at a time to Gran Turismo, Point Blank or Resident Evil 2 as a part of a healthy, socially-accepted and chic lifestyle which no longer has to otherwise revolve exclusively around listening to Iron Maiden and masturbating (simultaneously, if you fancied yourself as a sophisticate).

But fans of the smart image of the New Videogaming shouldn't relax just yet. Take a look at any PC games magazine, and you'll see, overwhelmingly, two types of game - Quake clones, and Command & Conquer clones (with the odd space war/flight simulator thrown in for variety). Both genres invariably utilise "fantasy" settings, heavy on Tolkien/SF influences and the colours brown and purple, with titles like "Conflict: Freespace" and "Hexen 2: Portal Of Praevus" and overwhelmingly "serious" storylines involving Space Marines, giant nailguns and apocalyptic wars. Instruction manuals are yards thick, the chances of any normal person ever wanting to play the game tissue-thin. (For PC gamers, the exclusivity is largely the point.)

Flick through a console mag, though, and you'll be blinded by bright, rich primary colours and beckoned by simple, easy-to-grasp, inviting-looking games that practically beg the casual passer-by to pick up the joypad and have a quick go. As any drug dealer will tell you, accessibility is the key to addiction, and it's accessibility that has enabled Sony to get Playstations under the TVs of people who'd never previously have dreamed of buying a games machine.

It's alarming, then, to note that the year's fastest-selling Playstation game to date is the awful Premier Manager 98 (Gremlin, £50). Football management titles are the definitive PC game - endless screens of statistics straight out of a trainspotter's notebook, practically no moving graphics at all, and the player required to live vicariously in the body not of a Ronaldo or a Zidane, thrilling crowds with primal displays of dazzling skills, but in the stooping, balding, sheepskin-clad shape of the manager. Those who would make that choice used to be confined to the PC ghetto, with anoraks for straitjackets. Now they're coming into our world and shaping the future development of our lovely Playstation games by demanding more "realism" (as seen in the insufferably dull but hugely successful TOCA Touring Car), less "kiddy stuff" (witness the failure of clever and innovative but unmistakeably cartoony Gex 3D), and, terrifyingly, lots more games with names like "Conflict: Freespace" and "Hexen 2: Portal Of Praevus" (evinced by the forthcoming Breath Of Fire III - you know it's serious when it's got Roman numerals in it - Xenocracy, the unforgettable Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver, and a whole clutch more horrible colon-in-the-title classics like Colony Wars: Vendetta and Ninja: Shadow Of Darkness). Kill them. Kill them before they breed. Kill them all.

BANJO-KAZOOIE

(Nintendo 64, Rare, £50)

Having been shamefully overlooked in 1997's end-of-year awards despite the originality and outright genius of Blast Corps and Goldeneye, UK developers Rare's latest release sees them sticking to the other half of their oeuvre - genetically modified clones of existing Nintendo games. As with the earlier Diddy Kong Racing (basically a cover version of Mario Kart 64), Banjo-Kazooie is so like its subject (in this case, Super Mario 64) that you half expect Cilla Black to pop up mid-game and reveal them to be long-lost twins who didn't know of each other's existence. Such is the pedigree of B-K's inspiration, though, that it's still probably the best game released so far this year. Marvellous.

BUST A MOVE

(Playstation, Sony, £35)

In which Parappa The Rapper unexpectedly finds himself on the set of Boogie Nights. This is another tap-in-time-to-the-music effort from Japan, except that instead of making a cartoon dog rap, this time you're effecting some lavish dancefloor exhibitionism from a strange cast made up in equal parts of Saturday Night Fever rejects and lycra-clad junglist babes, frugging away in head-to-head dance contests. It's much tougher than Parappa, which is good, but sadly you have to concentrate so hard on the confusing little flashing lights telling you which buttons to hit that you never get to actually watch your character's funky moves, which kind of defeats the object.

MORTAL KOMBAT 4

(Nintendo 64, GT, £50)

In a FIFA 98-type scenario, this might just be the last-minute lifeline that saves the reputation of the Mortal Kombat series, last seen taking a mandatory eight count after the huge critical battering delivered to the previous N64 outings, Trilogy and Mythologies. Technically the game's taken the leap into 3D, but the effect is almost totally cosmetic, the shoeing action still being conducted very much on a flat plane. What's different is the speed (extremely nippy), the return to back-to-basics brutality (although with a great Bugs Bunny touch when the characters produce huge spiked clubs from nowhere and belabour each other extravagantly with them), and controls that do what you want when you want them to. Yep, it was that simple, GT. What went wrong before?

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE

(Nintendo 64, Infogrames, £50)