As if we needed more incentive to get our hands on one of the most anticipated PlayStation Vita games, players that preorder Gravity Rush will score a code for the Military DLC Pack, giving Kat a sharp new look to carry here through new missions and challenges.

It's not just a pretty costume; the Military DLC Pack has Kat training to be an officer once Episode 17 of Gravity Rush's story is complete. The "Game Rules" missions sees Kat working alongside her rival, the wonderfully named Seawasp. The Nevi appear, you (hopefully) defeat them, and wind up looking all pink and sexy.

"Game Rules" is followed by "Visionary Courage", a mission in which Kat must choose between her duty and her friends. I'd probably go with friends.

All this, plus two challenge missions: "Factory Energy Gate Race 2" and "Slide Race in Another Dimension".

Gravity Rush hits North America on June 12, at which time we'll all be at E3. Nice timing, Sony. Jerks.

Gravity Rush Pre-Order DLC Revealed [PlayStation Blog]

I spend a lot of time with the quarian lately; she's become my favorite. Though if I'm being strictly honest, she's actually the third quarian. The first two long since reached the limits of their potential with me, and are now off fighting some other battles elsewhere in the galaxy.

It's the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer mode that's gotten me hooked. I've been spending hours and half-hours here and there with it many weeknights and nearly every weekend since the game launched, and for me, that's a first. I originally came to Mass Effect because I loved the stories of the people who made up the living, breathing soul of the Milky Way. But those stories, those companions and enemies and larger-than-life heroes, are completely absent from the multiplayer experience that of late I find myself so addicted to. So what gives?

It's not that I've never played an online multiplayer game before; it's that I haven't generally enjoyed one enough to keep coming back to it when I didn't have to. And in all honesty, I didn't expect to enjoy it with Mass Effect 3. I resented (and still resent) the implicit requirement that I go online and work my way through a number of 20-minute bouts mowing down mooks in order to complete Commander Shepard's single-player story to my satisfaction.

When I played through ME3 with my imported Shepard, I played for character and for story. I lingered fondly over the Normandy and the Citadel, seeking out every conversation I could with the NPCs I liked best. I only sought out multiplayer adventures when there was only one mission remaining in my journal, the ultimate point of no return for the game. I worked my way through enough matches to get my Galactic Readiness up to 75%, and then bailed, running back to finish the single-player story before my number could deteriorate.

I was done. Multiplayer was just an inconvenient add-on, not for me. Having finished ME3 twice, I set it aside, assuming I was finished until more DLC inevitably arrived.

Only... I missed it.

I found myself going back. First, by offering to jump into MP matches with friends who hadn't yet finished the single-player game, and who wanted help getting their readiness higher. But there weren't that many of those friends whose schedules meshed with mine. So I went into a few random-matching public lobbies. And then a few more. And then just one more, because it's getting late, but, well, okay, this is a good group, one more round before bed can't really hurt...

Six weeks after starting, I've decided that I really love playing Firebase Hydra, with Firebase Dagger as a close second. Firebase Ghost and Giant aren't bad either, but I groan aloud every time I get thrown into Firebase Reactor. I hate that freaking map. The "key enemy personnel" and "enable / disable four devices" wave types are my favorite, but I cringe whenever the team has to band together and defend a computer that inevitably gets placed in an absolutely terrible defensive position, with little to no cover. Having to stand in the open for three waves out of ten made for one particularly excruciating round.

But what I really love is that I'm getting better. I play Infiltrator by preference, and after a few weeks of doing it nightly, I'm really getting quite good. I've mastered the use of Tactical Cloak to run right past Cerberus, geth, or reapers to where I am needed most. I've become excellent at finding defensible sniper positions, and at taking down my enemies with a single, well-placed shot. Invisible, I can dart about the map to reach targets while timers tick down, or move to a fallen comrade while s/he can still be revived.

I don't often play games just for the sake of building a particular player skill. I enjoy games with narrative arcs, games where you gain more weapons and powers as you level up, games where over time you earn a bag of tricks that you can deploy at will. But Mass Effect 3's multiplayer has drawn me in, and has me actively working to get better at it and to take on harder challenges. BioWare's Mass Effect team said outright at PAX East that they hoped continued multiplayer content would keep discs in drives and players engaging with the game, and I have to admit that on me, at least, it's working.

What helped me warm up to it was a sense of safety and comfort. After playing Shepard as an Infiltrator through three single-player games (and playing those games more than once each), I knew how to handle the character type. I knew, from my single-player experience, how Cerberus operated and how reapers were likely to attack. I felt that I had enough knowledge, going in, not to embarrass myself so badly that I couldn't continue. And so I had the confidence to learn more.

Does the multiplayer add significantly to the true core experience of the Mass Effect arc? Not really. While it's clever to get a bit of insight into the "offscreen" battles being waged elsewhere while Shepard takes the starring role, the premise wears thin quickly. The multiplayer maps show up in the single-player game as N7 missions, and there are only so many times that Admiral Hackett can command you to take down four conveniently-appearing high-ranking enemy personnel before the pretense wears off.

But it's got me invested in the universe in a whole new way. It's made me willing to play pretend, to go along with the story I'm being told. It's made me want to take down reapers, to keep that Readiness at 100%, and to be sure that I'm not the weakest link in the chain. It's made me want to join in on weekend bonus missions and to earn the virtual credits that pay for new virtual guns (one of which, someday, must eventually be a better sniper rifle. Please, game?).

And more importantly, it's made me willing to give a fair shake to multiplayer modes on my single-player games going forward. Kotaku boss Stephen Totilo just found tremendous value in the upcoming Max Payne 3's multiplayer mode. Single-player games I love, like Assassin's Creed and Uncharted, have been trying to entice me online for a while now. Perhaps I've finally learned to listen.

I'll get right on that. After just one more round...

Geoff Keighley, Game Trailers TV host and master of the world exclusive video reveal is currently in hype mode for Thursday's installment of GTTV and is promising the following in a new promo for the show...

"A huge PlayStation 3 exclusive..."

"...this new game that will definitely be the talk of the Internet..."

"the next great PlayStation 3 exclusive..."

The development studio is the start-up Superbot Entertainment.

Oh, and on Twitter, he added: "I was absolutely blown away!"

Theories? Not God of War: Ascension. Maybe the long-rumored PS3 all-star fighting game? Something else?

The new episode of GTTV will air on Thursday night (aka Friday morning) at 1:05 ET/PT.

GT.TV Episode 516 Promo [GameTrailers.com]

This latest video hosted on AmazingFilms247 captures a player knifing almost every single enemy.

It all happens so fast that the other players are left wondering what the hell even happened.

We've mentioned Namco Bandai's Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy briefly during the launch of the new iPad, but we never got around to featuring it as a Gaming App of the Day. I don't know about everyone else, but for me this was because I was too busy playing Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy.

This is console-quality air combat in portable form offering more options and gameplay for $4.99 than most console games in the genre deliver for $60. It's got a lengthy single-player story mode, dogfight missions, and five different online multiplayer modes (for up to 10 players thanks to a recent update). At any given moment I can pick up my iPhone 4s or iPad 3 (that's what I'm calling it, dammit) and within seconds I am engaged with players from across the country, dodging their missiles while taking them down with my trusty P51's machine guns.

There are dozens of planes to unlock, with more coming via regular updates. Each handles like a dream no matter which of the four control modes you select, from full-on simulator to the more casual control pad options.

And the graphics? Well the graphics are certainly impressive, especially on Apple's newest devices, where it's optimized with 4x anisotropic filtering, refractive raindrops, radial blur, and other buzz-words that mean it looks pretty.

Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy has gotten plenty of praise for the way it looks, but it's the way it plays that's the real triumph here. It's like a portal Ace Combat game, only without all the disappointment.

Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy [iTunes - $4.99]

This is trolling at its finest (or worst, really).

A MW3 player gets into a smack-talking back and forth with what seems to be a young kid, and records it for funsies. Funsies eventually turns into YouTube user Darknessgta4 playing the recording back to the kid, after which he actually gets the kid to argue with...himself.

The fact that the argument amazingly lines up so well just goes to show how ridiculous this whole trolling, online insulting thing really is. Can't we all just get by with a "good game" and leave it at that?

Trolling on MW3 - Making a Kid argue with himself (Funny) [YouTube via Reddit]

In honor of The Witcher 2, which was rereleased as an enhanced edition for Xbox 360 and PC last week, here's an awesome action sequence that was inspired by the game's frenetic spell-filled combat. It's quite well done.

Confrontation at Dawn - Witcher-inspired short [YouTube]

MTV has been active in encouraging younger voters to get to the polls for well over 20 years. In 1992 they brought the "Choose or Lose" campaign to the airwaves, and in the decades since they have frequently partnered with nonprofit Rock the Vote to air initiatives encouraging 18-24 year-old voters to get to the polls and engage with the democratic process.

But your average college-aged voter doesn't sit around watching MTV in his or her spare hours anymore, and hasn't in quite some time. So MTV is going to where they think their audience is: social and mobile gaming.

Fantasy Election '12 will make a literal game of the civic process in two ways. The first is by giving players points for being engaged. Like many a social game, players can gain points for using social media tools to get their friends playing. The game will also use Foursquare and GetGlue to give players points for attending town hall events. watching debates, and showing up at polling places.

The other half of the game is where the candidates for office and their real-world behavior come into play. Players will assemble "fantasy teams" of their own, not unlike fantasy sports games. As CNN describes it:

Players can "draft" any candidate running for the U.S. presidency, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

To encourage players to select honest, inspiring politicians, the most valuable candidates will have measurable integrity as well as strong poll numbers. Each candidate's "value" will be an aggregation of several key data points from specific partners.

The data forming each candidate's integrity scores will be pulled in from sources like RealClearPolitics, PolitiFact, and the Wesleyan Media Project. Players and candidates will also gain points from engaging on Facebook and Twitter.

Meanwhile, there are real-life prizes on the line for the most engaged, highest-performing players. Tickets to MTV's Video Music Awards as well as to the next Inaugural Ball are expected to be the top-tier rewards, as well as smaller items of merchandise and digital downloads.

The entire political process often finds itself treated as a game both by the people running for office and by those who cover the races, so somehow making a literal game of it for young voters doesn't seem entirely misplaced. And yet it seems questionable whether disengaged young voters can or will become engaged voters simply because of a game. Those who are most likely to play and remain playing are likely to be those who already care about the political process.

MTV exec Jason Rzepka said in a statement about the game that, "Our audience grew up gaming, and Fantasy Election '12 will give them a fun new way to participate in the electoral process, while also holding candidates accountable." He's certainly right about the audience having grown up gaming (a voter who turns 18 in 2012 was born in 1994). If he's also right about being able to convince his audience into engaging with the political process, then Fantasy Election '12 may have a powerful real-world impact indeed.

MTV hopes online game can energize 2012 youth vote [CNN]

BioWare's sci-fi role-playing game is available at Amazon today for $30, thanks to an all-day Gold Box video game sale. Looks like they'll have PlayStation Move and Final Fantasy XIII-2 later today. [Amazon]