Mortal Kombat Tells Kratos To "Get Over Here"

This sort of went around a little bit back at E3 this year, but I think the Hip Hop Gamer was the only person to actually put the word out at the time. Now, it sounds like the first hard information about Kratos' appearance in the PlayStation 3 version of the next Mortal Kombat game is starting to surface via the January issue of PlayStation: The Official Magazine.

If you spend even a few moments of your time thinking about it, it totally makes sense. Kratos is an angry, angry dude that spends most of his time ripping things in half. On top of that, he has big-ass chains that he can practically use like Scorpion's spear. Not that Kratos will be some kind of fancy new palette swap or anything. The information states that he won't figure into the game's story mode, but he'll have his own set of moves, finishers, and even an new stage.
 
I know what you're asking. You're asking "what does David Jaffe, the guy that started all this God of War business, think about all this?" And, thanks to the magic of Twitter, I have the answer. 

Dude Kratos would have a FUCKALITY and fuck the SHIT out of Sonya AND Katana at the same motherfucking TIME!!!! :) 

In other news, I love David Jaffe. He's as real as it gets.

Though some are assuming this means that the Xbox 360 version will surely have an exclusive character of its own, I'm going to stab out and say forget about it. When you consider that Sony's already sliding some money Warner's way to get 3D support and some new, 3D-friendly angles for fatalities into the PlayStation 3 version, a one-sided character exclusive makes total sense to me. Besides, which first-party Microsoft character would you slide into the MK universe? Keep in mind that a Spartan already appeared in Dead or Alive 4.

(The obvious answer is, of course, Banjo and Kazooie. And in their animality, they turn into a fudgehog. But let's not get too far off track, cool?)

I'm still not a huge fan of guest appearances in fighting games. They're usually gimmicky and often detract from the overall experience. But at least Kratos is an M-rated kind of guy that can work with the gruesome murders and violence that define the Mortal Kombat experience. He'll certainly fit better there than he did with those Soul Calibur dudes.

While we're talking MK, an unprotected directory on the game's official site let enterprising fans dig around and get some sound clips for some unannounced characters. If the files are genuine, those characters are...

• Goro
• Quan Chi
• Stryker
• Noob Saibot
• Sindel
• Kabal
• Shao Kahn
• Smoke
• Shang Tsung
• Ermac

Mortal Kombat enthusiast destination, TRMK, also states that some of the other sounds on the site point to a return for the "Test Your Might" minigames and speculates that another file might indicate that a human version of Sektor could be in the game, which sounds a little far-fetched to me, but we're dealing with a franchise that has included plenty of crazy stuff over the years. Hell, I don't know. It's all unofficial and could have been planted there just to throw us off, right?

In conclusion:

• Kratos: Sure, why not?
• Stryker: Yay!
• Quan Chi: Boo!

Mortal Kombat is due out in the spring of 2011.