Another year's nearly at an end, which means delicious food and presents have us surrounded on all sides. Incidentally, the entire team at Splash Damage would like to wish all our readers a supremely Happy Christmas and a safe holiday period. 2009 was an eventful year for the studio and 2010 promises to bring even bigger and better things.

Now, last year's Christmas Tapirthon was a huge success and raised some 1250 pounds to help conserve tapirs around the world. What's a tapir, you say? Why, it's a large browsing mammal, roughly pig-like in shape, with a short, prehensile snout. Well, at least if you believe Wikipedia. It's also Splash Damage's company mascot and with all four of the tapir species facing extinction, we try to raise awareness (and money) for their cause whenever possible.

With everyone's Game of the Year awards out of the way, the internet's collective eyes now turn towards crowning next year's most anticipated games. We're pleased to see that Brink has managed to picked up several of these so far - here are a few of our favourites:

• Ginormous internet portal MSN UK named Brink one of its 20 Biggest Games of 2010
• Germany's Bild, one of the largest newspapers in the world, included Brink amongst its 40 Best Games of 2010
• Kotaku thinks 2010 is going to be The Year of Better Xbox 360 Games and lists Brink among the titles to look forward to on the platform
• Digital Battle's Top 10 Original Games of 2010 includes Brink
• Brink also made Techie Blogger's Graphic Game Monsters of 2010
• Lastly, if you haven't already, don't forget to vote for Brink as your most anticipated game in Voodoo Extreme's Reader's Choice Awards!

Have you managed to spot Brink in a Most Wanted feature not listed here? Let us know in the comments!

It's the end of the year, which not only means that it's time for all manner of Game of the Year awards, but it's also when upcoming game releases are bestowed with "Most Anticipated" honors. To that end, the chaps at Voodoo Extreme have kicked up their annual Reader's Choice Awards, allowing the gaming public to decide on their favorite games of 2009 as well as their most wanted releases of 2010.

Brink is up in the latter category and needs your votes! Conveniently, voting's about as easy as it gets and does not require registration or anything of the sort. Simply head on over to Voodoo Extreme's Most Anticipated category, pick Brink from the list and submit the form.

Voting closes December 31st - be sure to submit your choices before then!

Welcome to the latest edition of Snap to Grid, our semi-regular showcase of community maps and mods for Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars. As always, MC-mappa Terry 'Salteh' Seidler is here to give you a guided tour of some of the latest happenings in Mapping Land.

Fully living up to its 'semi-regular' label, Snap to Grid was last seen several months ago, just before going on the world's longest Mediterranean pleasure cruise. A lot has happened since, so let's dive right in with an extensive look at the latest version of Contruction Site, which has come a long way since we first featured it earlier this year.

A brand-new teaser trailer has been released for Quake Wars Online, the free-to-play version of Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars being created for the Korean market. Quake Wars Online is in development at South Korean studio Dragonfly and features ETQW's familiar GDF and Strogg forces as they battle it out for Earth using a multitude of weapons, deployables, and vehicles.

Better yet, the game's freshly relaunched website has word that Quake Wars Online is moving into a limited public testing phase with slots for some 100,000 willing gamers. If you fancy participating, you can sign up until December 28, though it looks like this is available to Korean players only.

You can check the new teaser trailer out below.

What better way to spend a cold winter evening than by reading these fine new Brink interviews and previews? First up is Destructoid, where you can find a nicely put together video interview with Game Director Paul Wedgwood and Creative Director Richard Ham. The whole thing is served with a generous side of (previously released) gameplay footage, which makes it very watchable indeed.

If you like the way arranged blocks of letters scroll past on your screen, have a browse over to play.tm where Richard Ham is front and center-aligned in a new text interview. This one covers a variety of questions about Brink, its story and setting, as well as blending single and multiplayer.

And lastly, since you can never have too many previews, Official Xbox Magazine UK, Games.on.net, BritXbox, Alltern8, and eGamer are more than happy to help us out there.

Welcome to another edition of Currently Hurling, our semi-regular look at what games we've been playing here at Splash Damage and what we're looking forward to. 2009 is slowly but surely coming to a close but it's going out in style with a huge crop of awesome games across all platforms. With Assassin's Creed 2 now out there, we get to enjoy a few weeks of quiet before things heat up again in January. This works out as it'll actually give us time to actually spend time with all the great games that appeared in the past few weeks.

Anywho, in this edition, Philip is all about osmosis, Ed breaks up with his Rogue, and Tim spends a lovely weekend with the Ghostbusters. Oh, and as the title might imply, there's a fair bit of hidden blade action.

Want to see this week's Brink gameplay videos in even higher resolution to catch every last detail? Our friends at Voodoo Extreme have you covered, with the SMART demonstration and the three Container City gameplay videos available in full-blown 1280x720 Flash video. In all, there some 17 minutes of high definition Brink to be had - head on over to Voodoo Extreme to get watching.

G4TV's website has another batch of Brink goodies on offer, with the third part of the Container City walkthrough showing off the Soldier class and some heavy weapons action.

Last night's X-Play show also featured another look at Brink and for those of you who weren't able to catch it on TV, the segment is now available for watching online. In it, X-Play frontman Adam Sessler talks us through some of Brink's key features, while we get to look at plenty of action-packed gameplay footage.

Lastly, if you missed them the other day, check out the videos showing the SMART system, Container City, Part 1, and Container City, Part 2.

The latest Brink gameplay video is now available on G4TV's website, with the Engineer taking center stage as we delve deeper into Container City. Turrets and explosions most definitely included.

If you missed them the other day, here are the videos showing the SMART system and Container City, Part 1.

The next Brink video has gone up on G4TV, showing a few minutes of in-game footage set in the Ark's Container City district. This is the first part of this particular mission - expect to see more of it later in the week. Enjoy.

If you missed last night's Brink segment on G4's X-Play show, it is now available for watching on G4's website. There's some two minutes of new in-game footage to be had, largely set within the Ark's dilapidated Container City district and featuring ample sliding, vaulting, and shooting. Take a look and stay tuned for more videos to surface as the week goes on.