Square Enix announced the latest title in the Dragon Quest universe, and the first to make the jump to next-generation consoles, Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors will be released for the Nintendo Wii.

Xpand Rally Xtreme features new car classes, extreme rally tracks, expanded economics with a tuning plot, additional game modes and a realistic driving simulation model. A single player demo will be available early January featuring 2 rally track (Malaysia and Italy), Arcade and Simulation modes, drivable in 2 customizable vehicles.

Another day, another batch of game trailers was released. Instead of giving them all their own posts, we grouped them, and so far there are trailers for:

• Final Fantasy Tactics: The Lion War [PSP] - Trailer
• Tarr Chronicles - Trailer #2
• Puzzle Quest [PSP] - Trailer
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  We will update this throughout the day when new trailers become available. Read more for download links ...

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. provides a dynamic gameplay of fast and tough combats, where you oppose smart & dangerous enemies, a large set of diverse weaponry, possibility to control machinery, detailed and interactive game world, story-driven single player with original team gameplay, and multiplayer with numerous modes. A THQ release schedule reveals that STALKER, 5 years after its announcement, will launch March 16, 2007.

Nexuiz is a free 3D deathmatch game that is simply first person shooting reduced to the very basics with perfect weapon balancing. Alientrap has released a new v2.2.2 version but unfortunately there are no details available yet as to what it fixes/adds.

In development at Japanese studio d'Artoon, Vampire's Rain is a survival horror action game set in Los Angeles where you play as John Lloyd, an AIB special agent who has to fight his way past hordes Night Walker zombies.

After a few weeks of deliberation and voting, our top games of 2006 are finally being unveiled! We're starting with titles that garnered honorable mentions; these nominees received a significant amount of votes but fell just short of making the cut. Come back tomorrow for the top handheld titles, which will then be followed by the top console/PC offerings. Once that's out of the way, we'll start the countdown of the top 20 titles, including what WP considers to be the best game of 2006. Read more for the final results!

Crackdown pushes the action-driving hybrid genre into the next generation with the introduction of the first-ever truly 3-dimensional persistent playground, highly innovative co-op gameplay and an extensive prop interaction system all while taking place in a massive and highly-stylized urban center. Scanned pages from the latest GamePRO magazine reveal that Crackdown will, for a limited time only, include a Halo 3 mulipayer beta when it's released this February.

God of War II is a PS2 exclusive combat action-adventure videogame based on Greek mythology, where you will get reacquainted with the vicious ex-Spartan warrior Kratos and embark on the continuing epic odyssey. According to SCEA Santa Monica's Studio Director Cory Barlog's blog, Sony plans to release a God of War II demo in January, maybe bundled with a PS3, or through covermounted DVD.

Team17's Creative and UK Studio Director Martyn 'Spadge' Brown announced that they are in the final stages of development, and are currently hunting down the last few bugs. The lucky few people with a debug unit can already test Worms HD on Microsoft's Xbox Live developer system Partner Net. Spadge expects a formal announcement to be made early January, at the CES in Vegas. Team17 managed to get the full game into the 50mb XBLA limit, and is currently working on additional downloadable content.

In Tomb Raider: Legend, Lara comes alive with intricately animated expressions, moves and abilities. An arsenal of modern equipment, such as a magnetic grappling device, binoculars, frag grenades, personal lighting device and communications equipment.