Stuart Campbell aims for the brains in a new world of horror

It's not often that the videogames business takes any notice of constructive criticism, but a glance at the summer release schedules seems to indicate that the call for slightly more "adult" content in games (heard, among other places, in this very organ last year) hasn't, for once, fallen on deaf ears. We're still not talking The Ice Storm, or even Seven, but the latest games about to arrive here show a healthy level of grown-up unpleasantness - and, crucially, real emotional turmoil - that's rather more in keeping with the new, older demographic that in the wake of the Playstation, now forms the bulk of Britain's gaming audience.

Now, there's nothing new about blood and guts in videogames, but until now they've mostly been seen in an unmistakeably slapstick, cartoony kind of context - it's difficult to imagine even the most sensitive viewer being genuinely disturbed by even the most excessive Itchy-and-Scratchy-style spine-ripping fatalities of Mortal Kombat 3.

On the other hand, there aren't many things that make human flesh crawl in quite the same way as zombies, and the vacant-eyed undead brain-munchers are back in Resident Evil 2, the much-hyped sequel to the gut-churning Playstation hit of last year. The original Resident Evil was pretty spooky, but RE2 is piss-yourself scary, from the packs of zombies crashing in through windows to - and here's the unusual part - the horrible, pitiful way your hero-cop character limps and staggers ever more agonisingly and despairingly away from the relentlessly on-shuffling cadavers as you sustain injuries.

The game itself isn't as far away from the likes of Final Fantasy VII as it might at first appear (the cinematography's certainly up to the same stunning standards), dragging you by the hand along largely predetermined routes, but it's done in a far more engaging and immediate way - you're dropped right into the heart (and liver, lungs and spleen) of the action within seconds, with FFVII's endless hours of convoluted plot replaced, in essence, by a single word. Zombies. What else do you need to know? 

This purity is refreshing, but it's the genuine empathy with your appallingly beleaguered, eminently vulnerable character that marks the new maturity of videogame splattercore - disabling injury is something that's almost never been seen in games before, and the addition of a more "real" approach to onscreen violence in these games turns the visceral gorefest from a jokey, Brain Dead kind of deal into something a lot more upsetting. And with emotional range long having been the games business' last unexplored territory, that's a development which can only open up a whole new world of interesting possibilities.

EVERYBODY'S GOLF

(Playstation, Camelot, £35)

What could be better after a harrowing wade waist-deep in zombie entrails than a nice relaxing round of golf? Very little, and this lovely little Japanese title is also the ideal game for soothing the badly-hungover on a Sunday morning. It's pretty to look at (cute, huge-headed cartoon players being the order of the day), extremely friendly to play (in a way that most golf games, oddly, aren't), and almost totally silent, save for the gentle thwack of club on ball, the occasional chirping of birds and the soft, warm rattle of ball in cup. And if you're too frazzled even to manage proper golf, there's a little mini-golf course included too. A chilled-out delight.

GHOST IN THE SHELL

(Playstation, THQ, £45)

One of the worst things about videogames with involved plots is suffering through the appalling acting of the mates-of-the-programmers buffoons generally employed to appear in the between-levels explanatory sequences. (Even when games firms employ "proper" actors like Dennis Hopper or Malcolm McDowell, they seem to feel compelled to ham it up like 3^rd-year drama students as soon as someone mentions the word "games".) So it's a blessed relief that this game based on the popular manga comic favours professional-quality animation when the time comes to elaborate at length on the storyline. This care extends to the music too, with Derrick May providing an entirely fitting old-school techno soundtrack to the action, which involves piloting a spiderlike combat robot around the kind of urban/industrial/warehouse settings so beloved of the manga world. Your spidery ability to walk straight up and down vertical walls makes the game a lot more entertaining than the usual left-right-slaughter of mecha-robot shoot-'em-ups, and while it's mentally untaxing, Ghost In The Shell is about as good as thing kind of thing currently gets.

SPAWN

(Playstation, Sony, £40)

Players of the early demo version of Spawn were the recipients of a pleasant surprise. Not in the gameplay of this highly derivative Tomb-Raider-meets-Tekken exploring/fighting movie licence, but in the curiously eerie, original and effective atmosphere created by the near-total silence the action took place within. Predictably (but no less depressingly), the finished effort is almost utterly ruined by the worst blaring American heavy "rock" soundtrack yet heard even in an industry renowned for extra-specially terrible blaring American heavy rock soundtracks, but with the music turned off Spawn is a pleasingly bleak and tricky, if wildly uninventive, dark adventure.

KLONOA

(Playstation, Namco, £40)

Playstation stalwarts Namco have been unusually quiet for quite some time, but it's clear that they've been spending the months since their last releases working on this autumn's Tekken 3, because there hasn't been a great deal of effort expended on this unexciting platformer. Klonoa is a pseudo-3D effort in the same vein as Pandemonium and Crash Bandicoot, and as far as gameplay goes it's every bit as unappetising as those two standard-bearers of mediocrity. It's a good way cuter to look at than either of them, though, so if you're one of the inexplicably high number of people who appear, judging by sales figures, to lap up this particular brand of bland, you could easily do much worse.