Mass Effect 3 continues to chug along with new multiplayer downloadable content. Next week will see the release of Earth, a free add-on featuring three new maps — London, Vancouver and Rio De Janeiro — a brand new squad of elite N7 playable characters, a new Platinum difficulty option, a new in-mission escort/protect objective and a bunch of extra weapons and mods.
Here are the specifics:
Three New Maps – With the fate of the galaxy at stake, Earth’s military efforts have concentrated on three strategic locations. Defend Firebase Rio, home to the N7 training facility, along with Firebase Vancouver and Firebase London in the last stand for mankind.
New Array of Playable N7 Characters – Step into the boots of the Alliance’s most elite military unit with the N7 Demolisher Engineer, N7 Destroyer Soldier, N7 Fury Adept, N7 Sentinel Paladin, N7 Shadow Infiltrator and N7 Slayer Vanguard.
New Powerful and Unique Weapons – Lay waste to the enemy by unlocking the N7 Piranha Shotgun, N7 Typhoon Assault Rifle and Acolyte Pistol.
New Powerful Upgrades – Outfit your weapons with 12 new modifications and fortify your gear with 11 unique upgrades to defeat even the toughest foes.
New “Platinum” Difficulty – Conquer bronze in your sleep? Take down Silver with one hand? Beat Gold without breaking a sweat? Then grab your friends and test your skills on the brand-new Platinum difficulty.
New In-Mission Objective – Randomly occurring during waves 3, 6 and 10, this new objective will challenge teams to keep a targeted agent alive by protecting and escorting them to a designated extraction zone on each map.
Mass Effect 3: Earth will be available to download via Origin, Xbox Live and PlayStation Network on July 17th. (European PSN launch is July 18th.)
Matt Litten is a 28 year old from-the-womb gamer turned video game reviewer/blogger and current editor/owner/operator of VGBlogger.com. Matt got his first taste of gaming as a youngster on the NES and Atari, and the rest is history from there.
In 2004, three years removed from high school and still looking for a career direction in life, Matt landed his first gig in the video game review business writing for the now-defunct website BonusStage.com. After the sad and untimely close of BonusStage, the former staff went on to found VGBlogger.com, and after a short stint as US Site Manager for AceGamez Matt turned his attention to VGBlogger, and to this day is dedicated to making it one of the top video game blogs in all the blogosphere.
Matt is a fair-minded reviewer and lover of games of all platforms and types, big or small, hyped or niche, big-budget or indie. But that doesn't mean he will let poor games slide without a good thrashing when necessary. 
