Over the past couple of weeks, I've been getting my open-world RPG fix with Fallout: New Vegas. Yesterday I talked about how to mod the game to look nice and pretty, and from here on in I'm going to share some things I've noticed while playing the game.

So here's a thing: The Silver Rush. I tend to play Fallout games as an energy weapon specialist. And energy weapons are scarce, especially in Fallout 3. I remember when I finally figured out that the Enclave had plasma weapons, I'd farm their locations just to have enough plasma rifles to keep mine repaired.

So in New Vegas, I was happy to find that energy weapons were easier to come across in the early goings than they had been in Fallout 3. But then… the Silver Rush happens. And it almost breaks the game.

This store, run by a shady organized crime family, is on a corner in Freeside. The minute I walked in, I thought the same thing that I bet every single other person who played this game thought: I am going to steal every mother-lovin thing in this store.

The inside of the Silver Rush is an orgy of energy weaponry. Laser rifles lie next to beautiful rows of microfusion cells and energy cells, plasma pistols lie next to a plasma defender (!) a tri-beam laser rifle (!!) and a massive, all-destroying plasma caster (!!!). There are enough plasma grenades, pulse mines, and other weaponry to equip an army. And thanks to Bethesda's notoriously weird sneaking system, you can steal it all.

It's so easy. You just walk up to the table and crouch. At some point, you'll become "hidden," and then you can just… grab every single thing on the table. This happened the first time I played New Vegas, and this time around, I was waiting for it. I walked out of Silver Rush with enough plasma weaponry to last me the entire rest of the game. I even sold back some of the stuff I sold to get some mods for my weapons.

Was this on purpose? Did Obsidian intend for energy weapon players to find a ridiculous explosion of armaments to use? We may never know. All I know is that there's no way I'm the only one who robbed the Silver Rush blind. So come on, fess up. It's okay, you're in good company.

To be honest, this Tetris mug would probably drive me crazy. I would fill it with my morning coffee and then wait for that one long piece to fall. And I'd be waiting forever, because it never, ever will.

But the board will vanish as if it had, when I finish my coffee (or when I forget to finish my coffee, and let it sit around long enough to go cold). Because someone has finally applied the magic of heat-sensitive paint to the magic of Tetris licensing.

Just don't put it in the dishwasher. That'll give you a permanent game over.

Tetris Heat Change Mug [VAT19, via This Is Why I'm Broke]

It was a long time coming—longer than the gap between the announcement of the iPad 3 and the iPad 4—but Electronic Arts has finally released another military shooter.

The game is called Medal of Honor Warfighter. It's EA's first military shooter since 2011's Battlefield 3 (we're not counting this past winter's sci-fi first-person shooter Syndicate).

They make a lot of these kinds of games. Before MOH:W and BF3, there was, of course, BBC and AO2.

Why, in the past five years, we got…

2008

Army of Two

Battlefield Bad Company

2009

Battlefield 1943

Battlefield Heroes

2010

Army of Two: The 40th Day

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Medal of Honor

2011

Battlefield Play4Free

Battlefield 3

2012

Medal of Honor: Warfigher

That's 10 military shooters. Almost two a year! (Not counting map packs and expansions.)

Some may say that military shooters are inherently bad. They're not.

Some might say this is all EA does. Not true! They also make Dead Spaces, FIFAs, SimCitys and a whole lot more.

But who would dare accuse them of neglecting the military FPS? No one.

Coming next year from EA: Battlefield 4, another Army of Two and *maybe* whatever the former creators of Medal of Honor and Call of Duty are cooking up next. Plus: Crysis 3, but we're not going to count that.

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What about EA's rival, big bad Activision? We won't count their James Bond FPSes. We didn't count EA's either. (You know, we didn't count EA's sci-fi shooter Crysis games, either. Ditto: Bulletstorm since it was a space-pirate FPS.) From Activision, we wind up with just one Call of Duty game a year. That's five in five years. Add a few more if you want to count standalone portable games, but Activision still can't match EA's military shooter fervor.

Man, why is EA so into making games like these? Any ideas?

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(Note: An earlier version of this story mistakenly featured a shot of the non-EA shooter SOCOM in the lead image and has since been removed; it also incorrectly ID'd the Army of Two games, which this author had played through (!), as first-person shooters. I apologize for the errors.)

StarCraft is cool. Diablo is cool. So what if… the two combined, letting you click demons to death in outer space?? Why, that would likely be pretty great. And it could've been a reality.

Blizzard prototyped a version of Diablo set in space, according to an excerpt from David Craddock's upcoming book Stay Awhile And Listen excerpted at Shacknews.

Its nickname around the office? "Starblo." Heh.

Craddock describes it as "a Diablo clone, but set on a space opera stage."

"The project earned the nickname Starblo for its mix of a space setting and the action-RPG formula that made Diablo so successful," he said. "Like Diablo 2, Starblo would take place over several acts, but rather than journey across a single world, players would board their customizable spaceship and travel to new planets, killing and looting the space creatures they found there. By the time Dave Brevik and the Schaefers left Blizzard North in summer 2003, the Starblo team had produced a few playable builds of the game, but still hadn't come up with a proper name."

Shacknews will be running a full chapter from Craddock's book next week.

Author: Blizzard prototyped Diablo in space [Shacknews]

The inner workings of the new Macbook Pro, unveiled today at Apple's mini event, look familiar. In fact, if this thing had a laser on its shoulder, it could have had a successful film career in the 80s.

Late Saturday night, I finally finished Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, the game that's been keeping me up every night for the past two weeks. I clocked 26 hours and 20 minutes. It was fantastic.

As I played, I had been bugging Kirk non-stop. "Dude, you've gotta play this. You will totally love this game. It's like, part adventure game, part visual novel... and the story is awesome. It's chilling and unsettling and gripping and great."

Saturday night at around 4am, I ran to my computer and sent him an e-mail: "Uhh hey nevermind don't actually play it until you play 999 first."

I won't spoil the details, but I will say that if you plan to play Virtue's Last Reward, you absolutely must play its predecessor, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. It's not an option. It's the difference between your reaction to the game being "meh" or "holy shit!"

Virtue's Last Reward is out today for 3DS and Vita. We won't have a full review up—October is way too busy, and there are way too many games to cover—but the short version is: Yes, you should play this game. But only if you've played the first one.

Fortunately, 999 is still on sale: as of press time, you can get it for $15 on Amazon. If you're into good stories, visual novels, or adventure games—and you don't mind a lot of reading in your video games—both 999 and Virtue's Last Reward are well worth your time.

There's no question that Dishonored has great art. But in addition to Viktor Antonov's wonderful visual design direction and Sebastien Mitton's art direction, the game also has a lot of great art. As in, there are some really cool paintings in the game? Okay, you get it.

Bethesda has pulled together shots of all (I think?) of Anton Sokolov's collectable paintings from the game. These are sorta-spoilers, technically, since some of them are characters that turn up a little later on, but then again, as spoilery things go, they're… kind of just cool paintings of people. The paintings were done by real-world artist Cedric Peyravernay.

Have you found all of these in the game? I've only found a couple, mostly because the heart doesn't highlight them on my screen when I ask her. And if the heart don't point to it, Kirk don't go collect it. Maybe I should reconsider that approach…

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Dishonored Sololov Paintings [Tumblr]

Following a day of bad news for the embattled maker of FarmVille and CityVille. Zynga chief Mark Pincus just sent this note to his company:

INTERNAL NOTE FROM ZYNGA CEO AND FOUNDER, MARK PINCUS

Team,

Earlier today we initiated a number of changes to streamline our operations, focus our resources on our most strategic opportunities, and invest in our future. We waited to share this news with all of you until we had first spoken with the groups impacted.

As part of these changes, we've had to make some tough decisions around products, teams and people. I want to fill you in on what's happened and address any concerns you may have.

Here are the most important details.

We are sunsetting 13 older games and we're also significantly reducing our investment in The Ville.

We are closing the Zynga Boston studio and proposing closures of the Zynga Japan and UK studios. Additionally, we are reducing staffing levels in our Austin studio. All of these represent terrific entrepreneurial teams, which make this decision so difficult.

In addition to these studios, we are also making a small number of partner team reductions.

In all, we will unfortunately be parting ways with approximately 5% of our full time workforce. We don't take these decisions lightly as we recognize the impact to our colleagues and friends who have been on this journey with us. We appreciate their amazing contributions and will miss them.

This is the most painful part of an overall cost reduction plan that also includes significant cuts in spending on data hosting, advertising and outside services, primarily contractors.

These reductions, along with our ongoing efforts to implement more stringent budget and resource allocation around new games and partner projects, will improve our profitability and allow us to reinvest in great games and our Zynga network on web and mobile.

Zynga made social gaming and play a worldwide phenomenon, and we remain the industry leader. Our success has come from our dedication to a simple and powerful proposition – that play is not just something people do to pass time, it's a core need for every person and culture.

We will all be discussing these difficult changes more with our teams and as a company. Tomorrow, Dave and I will be hosting a post-earnings webcast (details to follow) and next week we will be discussing our broader vision and strategy during our quarterly all-hands meeting. I'm confident this puts us on the right path to deliver on the promise of social gaming and make Zynga into an internet treasure.

If you have any immediate questions, I hope you will talk directly with your manager, Colleen, or me.

I look forward to talking with you tomorrow.

Mark

Days before I bought a launch-day GameCube, I bought a GameCube game. Super Monkeyball, if you're curious. It's not unusual to be able to buy new games for a new console before you can buy the console itself. The evidence is mounting that you'll be able to do so next month with some Wii U games.

Nintendo's new console doesn't officially launch until November 18, but retailer GameStop is listing several games for release earlier in the month. A writer for The Examiner rounds up a list that includes Mass Effect 3 for November 5 and Assassin's Creed III for November 13.

Can we trust the GameStop listing?

I had started looking into this last week after hearing that the Wii U version of Call of Duty: Black Ops II might be available on November 13, the day the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 versions will be out. Activision PR says that's wrong and that we should expect the Wii U's Black Ops II on November 18.

The response I got from a Ubisoft public relations person regarding ACIII, and Just Dance 4 was different:

"We have communicated November 18; and we also know that our launch titles may be available prior to that date," a company rep told me. "But in case something changed, we thought it best to stick with communicating the launch date date. So, on November 13, indeed, Ubisoft titles may be on store shelves."

Here's a new trailer for the Vita remake of Persona 4, which Atlus will release on November 20. Anyone buying a Vita just for this? I'd totally consider it if I didn't have one already.