My passion for poker has taken a back seat for the last few months since I've been rediscovering the joys of PC gaming. But my deep routed gambling nerve centres jangled like spider senses after I heard about an interesting new Hold'em concept on Full Tilt.  read more »

What’s this? It's a blog written by the fine people who read PCFormat magazine and the community regulars on our forums, game servers and Steam group.

By popular demand I give you a Roobarb on PC racing...

PC racing games, like Test Drive Unlimited, are great for screaming around public roads with workmates...

Racing games. They are the marmite of the gaming world. People either love or they hate them. To truly appreciate and enjoy racing games you need to enjoy racing, period, whether it’s Formula One, MotoGP or even Lawnmower Demolition Derby. If you can’t understand why people love to drive “round and round” in circles for “hours on end”, then you’re probably someone who wouldn’t appreciate a racing game.  read more »

Mental chaos 'em up Just Cause 2 is making its way to the PC at the end of the month, and I managed to get a little hands-on time with the game and an interview with Avalanche Studios' Peter Johansson.The game is shaping up quite nicely, imagine Far Cry 2's open world with GTA IV's vehicular insanity. In my brief play-though I hijacked a helicopter, flew it over some mountains and then jumped out. It was bloody awesome.  read more »

When it comes to improving the performance of Windows, there are a number of techniques which should help to reduce demand on the processor and generally speed up your PC. Programs that start automatically with Windows are the most well-known culprits leading to longer boot times, unnecessary memory use and a general reduction in performance; while these are fairly easily to manage, if you want to fully gain control of your rig, you’re going to have to delve a little deeper.  read more »

Futuremark is best known for software that lets you benchmark your uber-PC, and see if increasing your heatsink's fan speed by 0.5 RPM will make any difference to your performance. Futuremark's first venture into games was Shattered Horizon, which we kinda liked, if only for the fact that the notions of "floor" and "downwards" were moot points.  read more »

Win a CM Storm mouse pad at our MW2 event tonight!

The PCFormat community is getting together for a Modern Warfare 2 party tonight starting at 8.30pm GMT. This will be led by forum veteran, [PCF]Falcs. If he's not on your Friends list then you'd better get an invite in for tonight.

If you fancy a chat while knifing each other, join the Team Speak 2 server - comms.lazeryattack.com:8769. The password is 'pcformat'.

Since Modern Warfare 2 has no dedicated server support, Falcs will be running a private match. We'll also be giving away a tidy Cooler Master Storm gaming mouse mat, during one of the games. Enjoy the splodes, people.

The Babysitter – offers a fun change of perspective and stars a team of elite ODST drop-troopers who find themselves playing second-fiddle to a godlike SPARTAN.

PC Format was at the premiere of Halo Legends this week, but don't worry: if you missed out, the DVD goes on sale on the 15th. Is it the game to movie conversion we've been waiting for? Well... no. Actually, it's depressingly mediocre stuff for the most part.  read more »

The trailer for the latest Fallout game has been released, and I've done a second-by-second breakdown of precisely what's happening, for easily-confused people. Like me.  read more »

It's mind blowing the incredibly sophisticated processes involved in producing some of the everyday technology we take for granted. Until SSD becomes cheap and large enough for practical use, the good old hard drive will remain with us for the foreseeable future. It's reliable and cheap, just £40 gets you 500 GB of brand named storage. But even at this disposable price point, the work involved in engineering such a device is intensely complex and precise. PC Plus have turned this manufacturing process into a rather interesting 'hows it's made' article you can find here.

I really like Bioware games, in fact I love their games! Epic story telling, incredible attention to detail and the superbly balanced action and RPG elements. With Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 released within a hair's-breadth of each other - "Ambassador you are really spoiling us".  read more »