By pretty much any lights, Namco’s light-gun lone-cop shoot-‘em-up Time Crisis is a great game. The settings are inspired, the action is hyper-intense, the atmosphere masterful. Players find their Pavlovian responses so finely-conditioned that you can shout the game’s urgent, relentless call to arms ("Action!") at them in the streets for hours afterwards and watch them leap reflexively to attention in the blink of an eye, eyes target-scanning frantically from side to side and arm raised in a shooting stance, imaginary gun clutched in sweating, slippery palm. (They might also drool a bit, so keep a hanky handy.) Try it in America and you’d probably be responsible for a real-life killing spree.

But: Time Crisis is a game that unavoidably belongs among the quick thrill fixes of the arcade, not on the dusty little screen of your TV set. There are only three levels of play, none of them particularly long. Assuming you don’t get killed, it takes less than 10 minutes to get from start to end. In an arcade, of course, this is fine – for 50p a go, how much can you ask? – but when you’re being asked to pay £60 for the home version (including your very own super-accurate light-gun, in an unpleasant shade of tacky plastic grey), the sums don’t look so good. Namco have tried commendably hard to address this issue, including special home-only modes and even a whole new set of extra levels that’s actually bigger than the original game, but it’s still hard to imagine that you’d play it the 120 times necessary to make it cheaper than sticking with the real thing (which, given its dedicated hardware and environment, is inherently rather more exciting, not to mention sociable).

And that, in a nutshell, is the current tragedy of the videogames business. Short-sighted greed prevents fantastic games like Time Crisis from reaching the big audience of non-geeks (this means you) who’d love this kind of thing like an abandoned puppy (for truly, this is a game with universal appeal – anyone who’s ever pointed fingers and shouted "Bang!" will be instantly at home and in ecstasy.) At £60, games like this are left squarely in the domain of the fanatic and the anorak and, it must be said, rightly so. It’s time someone did something about it. Storm the Winter Palace! Smash the barricades! Overthrow the evil capitalist whores of the games industry! Destroy them all! Accept no excuses! Alternatively, get down to the video shop and rent Time Crisis out for the odd night instead of buying it. We’ll leave the choice to you.

GOLDENEYE (Rare, Nintendo 64, £50)

Just as the N64 looked in real danger of dying through software deprivation, a hero arrives in the nick of time to save the day. And who better to fill that role than the estimable spy who loved you, Bond James-Bond? (Note to sub: check name). Style-wise, the game of last year’s film follows the basic Tomb Raider template, but in the same way that Oasis followed the basic Chas and Dave template – if you’ve got any sense at all, this is the best game you’ll play this year. Achingly atmospheric, nail-bitingly tense and more gripping than Gripper Stebson with Velcro gloves on, Goldeneye is simply on a different planet to pretty much every other game you can buy this year. It’s a diamond, and you’ll play it forever.

GRAND THEFT AUTO (BMG, Playstation/PC, £40)

Sort of a more urban cousin to last month’s Postal, GTA is the other game arousing the ire of the nation’s moral guardians this Christmas. It’s a light-hearted Mafia romp, in which you steal cars for money, assassinate rivals and waste any policemen or innocent members of the public who get in your way (or who you just don’t like the look of). It’s all rather lovely in a Pulp-Fiction-kind-of-feely way, except that the screen zooms in and out so much while you play that you’ll probably end up with a bit of a headache. But hey – it’s Christmas, you had a hangover anyway, right?

MOTO RACER (Electronic Arts, Playstation, £50)

The Playstation has almost been suffocated in 1997 under the weight of endless mediocre racing games, featuring F1 cars, sports hatchbacks, rally saloons, monster trucks, powerboats and futuristic hovercraft. The year’s first /essential/ racer, though, arrives at the last minute with this gorgeous motorbike effort from EA. Alternating high-speed road-race stages with dirt-bouncing world-tour motocross, Moto Racer is blindingly fast, silky-smooth and teasingly pretty, and it handles like a dream, too. Which, at £15 more expensive than most new Playstation games, is quite frankly the least you could expect.

SEGA TOURING CAR CHAMPIONSHIP (Sega, Saturn, £40)

It’s not all good cheer and mistletoe, though. Sega’s coin-op driving games have long been the company’s bread and butter, and the Saturn versions of Daytona USA and (especially) Sega Rally are largely responsible for the machine not (yet) having been totally obliterated by the all-conquering Playstation and the all-powerful N64. Sega Touring Car, though, looks like a race too far – the graphics are crude, the courses dull and the cars almost uncontrollable. New, non-arcade tracks try to bolster the lasting appeal, but the chances are you’ll already have binned the game before you get to see them.

FINAL FANTASY VII (Squaresoft, Playstation, £50)