"Vault 101," the Fallout 3 ballad by nerd rockers Kirby Krackle, is now available on the Rock Band Store. The download is $1 or 80 Microsoft Points. You can see it performed in-game on the jump.

Fallout 3 Tribute Track Rocks Rock Band

Dead Money, the first batch of downloadable content for Fallout: New Vegas, is now available on Xbox Live, and we've got a lovely screenshot gallery so the PC and PlayStation 3 gamers can play along.

Fallout: New Vegas players that scraped up the 800 Microsoft point asking price for the Xbox 360-exclusive Dead Money are likely searching for the lost treasure of the Sierra Madre Casino as we speak, so they need no gallery. The rest of us must content ourselves with a series of screenshots, as well as the knowledge that the expansion pack would have been that much more enjoyable had it been called Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Monkey. Just a 'K' away from true greatness.

My pre-holiday vacation is over, and our daily Speak-Up on Kotaku returns! Today commenter Gaston explores the very real dangers of drinking and gaming.

Let me tell you about the promise I made.

Typical weekend night. Got home late, but not too late. Drunk, but not too drunk. Tired, but not tired enough to sleep.

I did what anyone would do.

I took out my laptop and played some Fallout 3. Things went alright. I could have done better sober, but I didn't die. I did a lot of wandering, got a little bit actually accomplished, and went to bed content.

A few days later, when I played again, someone was missing.

"Dogmeat?! Dogmeat!" Surely he couldn't just disappear. He must be stuck running into a building or something.

Damn you, shitty pathfinding.

Comb the area. Search every crevice.

"DOGMEAT WHERE ARE YOU?"

And suddenly it dawns upon me. Dogmeat isn't here. Not only did I fail to protect him, but I forever recorded that failure onto my Quicksave slot, made the process irreversible.

In my drunken stupor, I changed a temporary inconvenience into an eternal tragedy. Dogmeat would never be back. Never again would I hear his joyful bark. And I was alone. Terribly, tragically alone.

So let this be a lesson to all of you. I have promised to never drink and game again - not in an open-world game with permanent death. Your companions are simply too valuable.

About Speak-Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run. That's why we have that little box on the front page of Kotaku. You know, the one with "Got something to say?" written in it? That's the place to post anecdotes, photos, game tips and hints, and anything you want to share with Kotaku at large. Just make sure to include #speakup in your comment so we can find it. Every weekday we'll pull one of the best #speakup posts we can find and highlight it here.

Get a load of these posters. They're game posters done up to look like movie posters, but not the boring kind, the kind you see for a quaint little art house cinema that only shows a movie once.

So they're not cold, stark images. They're a little kooky, a little old-fashioned, full of quirks and detail and colour. And there's not an airbrushed actor or "SUMMER 2011" in sight.

They're by Ron Guyatt.

Today in Speak-Up on Kotaku, commenter Culebra takes a look at the biggest games of the year that he never got around to playing. Which have you missed?

Well, we're almost at the end of the year, and as we know, we'll all see the same 'Best Of Year' lists that'll have the same four or so games on it. You'll also see those lists that try to be different, but probably aren't.

This is one of those.

My focus: Big releases that for some reason or other, you just didn't play.

For me, six big names pop to mind.

1: Halo: Reach

That one you could blame on Halo 3 and ODST. As much as I loved Halo 1 and 2, there was somehing I just didn't like about Halo 3, and it grew worse with time. And ODST didn't help much either, as I sent it back to Gamefly without even beating it. So I guess falling out of love with the series is what held me back.

2: Fallout: New Vegas

I loved Fallout 3. It was a post apocalyptic Oblivion, two things I adored. I sank so many hours into that game, and did damn near everything in it. Every quest, every dlc. But by the time Zeta dropped, I was getting sick of it. It felt like I was eating the same meal day in day out. No matter how tasty, you get sick of it. So Vegas is a victim of 'Too Soon' for me.

3: Call Of Duty: Black Ops

Did every game have a :Subtitle this year? Sheesh. Mostly the ones I didn't play, it seems. This one suffers from the same 'Too Soon' syndrome Fallout did, with the major difference being that I'm a casual COD player at best, so I've always been bi-annual with the series.

4: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Not sure if that ':' officially belongs there...but I think the theme must not be broken. This one could be chucked up to me not being a fan of the series in general. Which was odd, as people everywhere were harping on about how 2 was the greatest thing since toilets, and I'm there wondering if we're playing the same game. So, Brotherhood just held no appeal.

5: Gran Turismo 5: Epilogue

I know it doesn't belong there. Shut up. I also know that GT fans can be quite cultish, and I totally expect to wake up strapped to my floor surrounded by hooded figures. But that doesn't change the fact that I haven't loved a GT since 2, for whatever reason. I don't dislike them, and GT5 sits on my 'I'll get to it' list, but that won't be happening in 2010.

6: Civilization 5

To keep it nice and simple, I've never played a Civ game, so the draw isn't there. I think I'm reserving this one as an emergency game, for a period of time where there aren't any immediate releases, and I need something long and engrossing.

So there you have it, my 'Big Games Everyone Has Apparently Played But Me' list.

About Speak-Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run. That's why we have that little box on the front page of Kotaku. You know, the one with "Got something to say?" written in it? That's the place to post anecdotes, photos, game tips and hints, and anything you want to share with Kotaku at large. Just make sure to include #speakup in your comment so we can find it. Every weekday we'll pull one of the best #speakup posts we can find and highlight it here.

After over a month of various technical woes, particularly on the PC version of the game, it seems as though Fallout: New Vegas may actually be fixed soon. Maybe.

Publishers Bethesda have hit the game's support page to let gamers know that a cross-platform patch for all three versions of the game - believed to be the "comprehensive update" developers Obsidian have been working on since the game's release - has been submitted for approval, meaning it should be with us soon.

Let's hope so! A lot of people will be getting the ambitious post-apocalyptic role-playing game for Christmas, and I'd hate to see a smile turn upside down on December 25 should a game hit some weird bug that brings everything to a halt.

[Bethesda]

A Canadian military garrison has a rush order out for 500 video games, a requisition that a headquarters spokeswoman admitted is "strange."

The government tender, which closes Dec. 2, asks for Gears of War, Grand Theft Auto 4 and Assassin's Creed 2, in addition to rhythm gaming titles, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, and X-Men Origins. The spread and the appeal of the games, plus the fact they asked for Gears of War on the PC, make the tender extremely curious. No one's going to be playing Fallout 3 in a rec hall, you know.

The shipment is to be delivered "as soon as possible" to the Longue-Pointe Garrison in Montreal. For Gears of War, 93 copies are requested. For Modern Warfare 2, the garrison requires 82 copies. Longue-Pointe Garrison is a supply depot.

The complete list in the Canadian Forces order according to the CP:

Gears of War (PC)
Rock Band 2 (Xbox 360)
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360)
Guitar Hero 3 (Xbox 360)
Assassin's Creed 2 (Xbox 360)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360)
Grand Theft Auto 4 (Xbox 360)
Gears of War (Xbox 360)
Mortal Kombat DC Universe (Xbox 360)
Rock Band (Xbox 360)
Tiger Woods 2011 (Xbox 360)
X-Men Origins (Xbox 360)
Guitar Hero 3 Legends of Rock (Xbox 360)
Fallout 3 (Xbox 360)
Assassin's Creed 2 (PS3)
Ghost Recon (Xbox 360)

‘Gears of War,' ‘Call of Duty' on Canadian Forces' Hit List [Canadian Press via GamePolitics]

Bethesda Softworks is calling Fallout: New Vegas' launch a success, with more than five million copies shipped since the game's release, with retailers calling for more. Now all they have to do is fix it.

After the warm reception Fallout 3 received a few years back, it was a no-brainer that Fallout: New Vegas would sell like crazy, and it has. More than five million units have shipped for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC, with a " heavy volume of digital downloads" rounding out what amounts to well in excess of $300 million in sales.

"We are delighted by the reception Fallout: New Vegas has received from fans around the world," said Vlatko Andonov, president of Bethesda Softworks." Despite the large launch quantities for this title, we have already received substantial re-orders from our retail partners, underscoring the tremendous popularity of this highly entertaining game. We believe Fallout: New Vegas will be the "must buy" title for gamers throughout the holiday season."

I don't know. I'm just not feeling it this time around. I've tried playing the game multiple times now, and always wind up quitting after an hour. Maybe I just feel like I've done enough wasteland wandering.

Anyone else in the same boat?

Fallout: New Vegas released 18 days ago. That's 432 hours. Since then, more than 475,000 hours have been spent reading and editing the Fallout: New Vegas wiki. That's 58 years.

Over on Wikia, where numerous games' wikis are tended by legions of fans, Fallout added more than 1,200 new pages since the game's release, and its traffic shot up sevenfold at one point - 2.5 million visitors in one week.

They weren't just lurking. "Over 475K man hours were spent reading and creating content about Fallout: New Vegas – the equivalent of 58 years!" wrote one editor in a note to the community. The traffic surge also shattered all previous Wikia records. World of Warcraft's Wiki was the previous title holder, with 5 million daily page views. Over the past two weeks, Fallout's has beaten that mark, topping out at 8.8 million on Oct. 24.

As the wiki is named The Vault, might some be taking "We are born in the Vault and we will die in the Vault," a bit too seriously?

New Vegas Players Spend 58 Years At The Vault [Fallout.Wikia, thanks Pawel]

What happened when you pile 200 frag mines around some guy standing around in Fallout: New Vegas and then shoot the explosives? Fun, that's what!