Last year, I wrote one of my favourite articles of all time: a news piece on speedrunner tomatoanus, who'd set a particularly unusual record. He'd managed to set a "sex%" world record in the Fallout series - an unofficial speedrunning category involving having sex in each of the main games as fast as possible. (He's also done an equally impressive Fallout series world record speedrun).

In any case, that unusual username has become a bit of an issue when trying to register for charity speedrunning event Games Done Quick, with the organisers (understandably) taking issue with the "anus" in his username. I guess it wasn't wholesome enough for the family-friendly event. Or rather, too holesome.

According to tomatoanus' statement, GDQ had refused to list his name in three of the six previous events in which he had submitted runs. After contacting the organisers, a compromise was reached: tomatoanus could change his name to tomatoangus, and his submissions would be publicly listed.

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"One of my boring, pointless hobbies is making lists, recently these lists have been timelines," Connor Rawlings begins a reddit post by stating.

"Thus I present perhaps the most in-depth timeline of the whole canon Fallout series."

That's a huge claim, but one which - somewhat incredibly - seems to be true.

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Sex. Speedrunning. Not two things you expect to hear in the same sentence - and yet here I am, writing an article about it.

Speedrunner tomatoanus, who you may remember from his world record Fallout anthology speedrun (and his rather colourful username), has returned with yet another wacky video. Not content with whizzing through Fallout 1, 2, 3, New Vegas and 4 in under 90 minutes, tomatoanus' latest speedrun is all about sex. Specifically, getting it as fast as possible. Like a night out in Magaluf.

Similar to his other world record speedruns, tomatoanus played through the games considered by the community to be the "main" titles in the Fallout series, with the goal being to have sex in each game as quickly as possible. This apparently has its own unofficial category, called a "sex%" run, and has already been attempted by a number of speedrunners in Fallout 4 (check out these ones by Jinjenia and Duchys).

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There's been plenty of negativity surrounding the Fallout series as of late - so today it's time to focus on something rather more hopeful. Following in the footsteps of other remake mods like Fallout New California, one modding team is using Fallout 4 to give Fallout 2 a rad-ical makeover.

Fallout 4: Project Arroyo, named after the tribal village in Fallout 2, was publicly announced on Reddit back in December. Some commenters were sceptical as to whether the project would get off the ground - but earlier today the team shared more information and several screenshots to give us our first look.

"Fallout 2 became my favourite Fallout game when I began playing it," team member DoctWhite stated on Reddit. "The branching questlines, dynamic stories, and the immersive universe all called my name, however there was one problem for me. That is the game's isometric and outdated gameplay.

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Barren wastelands. Decrepit and abandoned towns. Desolate landscapes ravaged by time and trauma. Recognisable landmarks slowly but surely reclaimed by nature after our demise. Games have consistently embraced the post-apocalyptic setting. It invites excitement, apprehension and a deep curiosity, and plays on the thought-provoking hypothetical, the 'what if?'. And when these post-apocalyptic environments and landscapes are incredibly detailed, they can result in great efficacy and power.

Of course, all games use artistic license to a degree to ensure their pacing, setting and characters are primed for our experience and, as a result we give them a healthy amount of leeway when it comes to their landscapes. But just how much artistic license is an interesting area to investigate. Have the developers ruthlessly stuck to an accepted setting or set of circumstances? Or have they created their own unique setting from scratch? Or, have they landed somewhere in the middle? Overall, how 'accurate' is the representation of their chosen hypothetical landscape?

Games' post-apocalypses give us a window into what might happen should everything go down the tubes for humanity, but also the earth. There are people who are experts or who have written about such scenarios, and one of them is writer Alan Weisman. Some fans of The Last of Us may know his book, The World Without Us, which helped inspire Naughty Dog and its portrayal of a post-apocalyptic, or human-less, USA. His book details how the world would change immediately after a sudden disappearance or decrease in human intervention.

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"Come on. Lighten up. Have a whiff."

It's late into Cyberpunk 2077's demo when Dum-Dum extends a claw toward V, offering a hit from a skull-adorned inhaler. Perhaps sensing the veiled hostility behind the supposed peace pipe being thrust under her nose, she obliges. Arachnid eye implants shine through a red haze. Dum-Dum takes his own hit, and flared nerves settle. Between all the talk of cred chips and bots, the tension that fuels this choice stems from a ritual as old as time. Breaking bread. Chinking cups. Passing the proverbial Dutchie to the left.

Adult games, as a medium, are often enamoured with their own portrayal of taboo subjects, but there's a streak of silently judgemental conservatism dulling the libertine sheen. By confining their use to grim settings, these stories condemn altered states of consciousness as the territory of society's dregs. At the same time, they're perfectly happy to hijack their aesthetics when it suits. Unexamined praise can be as useless as uninformed panic, of course, but let's be clear here: games are, for the most part, shit at doing drugs properly. Here's a brief history of drug use in games.

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Editor's note: Rob's piece here concludes his series of essays for Eurogamer on the seasons in video games. For more, be sure to check out Video games and the life of summer, starring Witcher 3, Firewatch and Dishonored 2, The power of spring in Horizon Zero Dawn, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and The Last of Us, and Video games and the power of winter, which looks at Skyrim.

Rain and wind, shorter days, and imminent dormancy; autumn often has a bad reputation. However, there is excitement, intrigue and pleasure to be found in this season of change. Landscapes become sparser with each leaf that drops in the wind. The temperature oscillates between a gentle warmth and a sharp chill. Golden foliage changes the colour of the land and alters the feel of the landscape.

Some games have wondrous, gorgeous autumn landscape that present supreme autumnal palettes, narrative-mirroring landscape conditions and encapsulate the mysterious change that hangs in the air.

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Is there anything more spine-tingling than loading up Skyrim to hear those ominous chants? Now imagine that with a live choir, in London's Hammersmith Apollo, all in the name of charity. Oh - and with some epic Fallout music thrown into the mix too.

Bethesda is supporting War Child UK to put on a live performance of its biggest musical hits. This includes tunes from Fallout 3, Fallout 4, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and even the mysterious upcoming game Fallout 76. Personally, I can't wait to hear a preview of the soundtrack to which nukes will be dropping on my head.

The concert is due to take place on Saturday 3rd November at the London Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith. The music of composers Inon Zur and Jeremy Soule will be performed by the Parallax Orchestra and Choir, who are not new to more unusual classical concerts, having previously performed Bring Me The Horizon at the Royal Albert Hall.

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In the real world, house prices are so high that owning your own home is a pipedream for millions.

But what would it cost to buy a house in, say, Skyrim, if it were in the real world? Well, all of a sudden house prices get a bit more realistic.

Mortgage broker L&C Mortgages spent some time working out the real world cost of property in a raft of video games, including Skyrim, Fallout, Zelda and The Witcher 3.

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If you're feeling tired of dreary post-apocalyptic Boston, not to worry, as a Fallout 4 mod plans to send you on your very own radiation vacation.

Fallout Miami is a new-world mod that has been in development for several years, but the team behind it have now released an official trailer to display their work so far. It's pretty impressive: the first zoom-out shot feels like something you'd see in an official Fallout trailer, and it's clear the mod will contain some fully-fledged questlines to keep players hooked. The neon logo also gives off serious Floridian vibes.

So what else do we know about the mod? Looking at the information given by the modders on their blog and subreddit, they want Fallout Miami to be comparable to official DLC, with "a main quest, multiple side quests, new items and a large cast of voiced characters". If you hadn't guessed from the name already, the mod is set in Miami beach, with a map size "slightly larger than Far Harbor". The core subject matter of the mod seems to be an "ideological struggle between Order and Freedom," which seems to sit nicely with themes found in previous Fallout games such as New Vegas.

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