This week I’ve been lucky enough to secure 20 voucher codes for the Starhawk Beta that is currently underway. I know that many of you are keen to get involved with this so straighten up those commenting caps – here is a question that should separate the hardcore gamers from the facebook farmers.

Take something like regenerating health. It’s a relatively new gameplay concept that has reached near ubiquity very quickly. Some say it’s not realistic for your character to magically heal themselves but hey – neither is having three ‘lives’ or resurrection by coin insertion.

This is just one example of many design choices that have been tried in a game, have worked, and are then widely adopted by others in future. Other examples might be the two gun limit, shoulder button acceleration when driving, red barrels, perks and inertia defying double-jumps.

Which game mechanic or design choice has had the greatest impact on gaming?

Our independent judge will pick the most insightful comments on Monday and I’ll get the codes sent out via private message over at http:community.eu.playstation.com.

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The Studio brings to PlayStation a collection of Static and Dynamic Themes for PS3 and PSP from some of the world’s greatest artists to create one of the best showcases of digital art anywhere in the world and they are all available for you to download.

We have partnered with Studio Output, one of the world’s most tuned-in creative design and production companies, to help us curate The Studio collection and ensure only the finest offerings in everything from urban street art to illustration are included.

Here is an update of the latest Themes from The Studio that on the PlayStation Store.

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Start the Party! Save the World is hitting the shelf this week and it’s packed with 20 fun-filled mini-games that will fire up your evenings with your friends and family.

Determined to take over the world by any means necessary, Dr. Terrible has a whole host of fiendish plans up his sleeve: dumping toxic waste in the water supply, attacking people with man-eating piranhas or unleashing a swarm of poisonous bugs on the world, nothing is beneath him. Armed with a motion controller and PlayStation Eye camera, it’s up to you and your friends to use whatever tools are at your disposal to foil Dr. Terrible’s evil schemes!

Transform your PS Move into a mechanical grabbing arm, use it as a laser zapper to shoot down alien invaders or even jump into a deep-sea submarine to rescue divers stranded at the bottom of the ocean.

If you want to live the adventure right away, why don’t you head over to the PlayStation Store? Here you can find a free demo with three mini-games to take a sneak peak at the great fun ahead.

Check out PlayStation.com to find a useful demo guide and take part in a competition where three lucky winners will receive a PS3, a Move Starter Pack and a copy of the game.

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“It’s Friday guys, which means the latest episode of Access is now online – woo, woo, woo! You know it!” – is what wrestling superstar Zack Ryder would say if he was writing this post. Make sure you catch the man himself as THQ’s man-chucking WWE ’12 hits the Game of the Week canvas in episode 10, with developer insight from Lead Gameplay Designer, Bryan Williams.

There’s more sporty goodness in the form of the GT Academy – the programme that takes elite Gran Turismo players and trains them up to be real life racing superstars. Access goes behind the scenes to check out the inner workings of the academy, plus takes a spin around Silverstone with resident champion, Jann Mardenborough.

If your games shelf is sagging under the weight of all those end-of-year blockbusters, why not have your say on which you thought was the best of the best in the first Access Game of the Year award? This episode gets the ball rolling as we show off 2011′s gaming highlights – to cast your vote head to http://facebook.com/playstationaccess.

As always, there’s a roundup of the best content on the PlayStation Store – including the ace Robin DLC for Arkham City – and a look at the week’s biggest news stories.

Access is available on YouTube every Friday – to make sure you never miss an episode, head to http://youtube.com/playstationaccess and hit subscribe.

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This week sees the launch of TEKKEN Hybrid, exclusively on PlayStation 3.

Created by NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc., the TEKKEN fighting game series is one of the world’s most popular gaming franchises. And TEKKEN Hybrid brings you some of the very best that TEKKEN has to offer, all on the one Blu-Ray disc:

TEKKEN Tag Tournament HD

Originally released on PlayStation 2, TEKKEN Tag Tournament gave players a new kind of freedom with the TEKKEN fighting engine. With the introduction of a partner tag system, you could now set up new combos and play styles with teams rather than individual characters. And now you can experience this PlayStation classic remastered in full HD for PS3, and complete with Trophy support. Pair up in the tag-team arena with the likes of King, Jun and Kazuya Mishima, and unlock the classic TEKKEN Bowl mode in this definite title for the fighting genre.

TEKKEN Tag Tournament 2 Prologue

This is the one everyone’s waiting for – the chance to get hands-on with the future of TEKKEN. TEKKEN Tag Tournament 2 Prologue is a new stand-alone fighting game vignette in TEKKEN’s classic ‘Tag Tournament’ style, based on TEKKEN Tag Tournament 2 which is currently in Japanese arcades. It features four playable characters that appear in the movie TEKKEN Blood Vengeance (see below); Ling Xiaoyu, Alisa Bosconovitch, Devil Jin and Devil Kazuya. Plus TEKKEN Tag Tournament 2 Prologue is playable in 3D and features Trophy support.

TEKKEN Blood Vengeance

Set after the events of TEKKEN 5, this brand new feature length 3D CG movie is a must-see for TEKKEN fans. Digging deeper into the corrupt underbelly of the Mishima Zaibatsu, Ling Xiaoyu and Alisa Bosconovitch uncover dark secrets that could destroy the Mishima family forever, but will they survive long enough to reveal all? Penned by Dai Sato (Cowboy Bebop and Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex) and directed by Yoichi Mouri, the movie was created by Digital Frontier, the animation studio that created the awesome TEKKEN 6 and TEKKEN Tag Tournament 2 CG intros.

Now a word from the man himself, TEKKEN creator and project director Katsuhiro Harada, “”We are very happy to be able to release all of this content on one Blu-Ray disc, and hope that it will be a truly compelling proposition for TEKKEN fans everywhere”.

More from Harada-san to come…. keep an eye on the blog for an upcoming Q&A.

See you all in the arena.

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