The real joy of playing a game on PC is that, thanks to mods, your entire experience can be improved by the work of dedicated fans.

Because some mods are so extensive, transforming almost everything about the source title, we felt it was only fair to list 12 of the best of them here, since they may as well count as their own new games.

It's an exciting year for gamers -- not just because the industry has whipped up an appetizing menu of fresh releases, but because we're approaching the next console generation, which will inevitably come with interesting new software projects, and many of them are bound to hit PC.

As usual, we've assembled a list of the hottest PC games expected to hit shelves over the next 12 months. Our selection includes 35 games and 10 bonus mentions we're lukewarm about.

Nvidia has opened the doors on its GeForce Experience after letting thousands of users hammer on it over the last month. Announced last April and introduced as a closed beta in December, the PC game optimizer aims to help players get the most out of their machines by automatically...

Cold rain drizzles outside. Inside, everything is pink, round, and frilly. The first floor of this otaku (geek) retailer is plastered with release info for new PC games—adult PC games. The shop is located in Den-Den Town, Osaka's geek and gaming district, on a street known as "Ota Road", short for "otaku road". It's easy to stumble into shops like this and find an array of dating games, some of which are erotic.

The vast majority of these games are not exactly mainstream in Japan, but their presence is palpable in a geek neighborhood like this. But what Western gamers think of PC games—the games from developers like Valve and Blizzard—aren't. It's not that those Western PC games don't exist; they just don't smack you in the face.

Preparing for the upcoming launch of AMD's Radeon HD 8000 series, which will presumably kick off with a single-GPU flagship leading the charge, Nvidia is reportedly hoping to steal some of its rival's thunder by releasing a new card that will exist between today's GeForce...