Kratos Along for the Ride In Mortal Kombat

POSSIBLE SPOILERS WARNING 

Yes, I know that this is old news, but if you've been out of it for a while, then this will be news to you. Kratos is coming exclusively to the PlayStation 3 version of 'Mortal Kombat.' No exclusive character has been announced as of yet for the Xbox 360 version.

I remember as a little kid, going to my friends house to check out the original 'Mortal Kombat' because it was the only game I was forbidden to play at home. It caught my interest because at the time, to the best of my knowledge it was the goriest game on a console. So graphic, in fact, that Nintendo apparently had asked that sweat be replaced with the blood to censor it. Sega was like "heck no, don't censor it, give it to us the way it was meant to be played!" I think I even got to play this on an arcade at the time.

Well, when this version of Mortal Kombat was announced, it was the thought of, oh no here we go again. Another Mortal Kombat. I really dugg the first Mortal Kombat and the second from there on never really impressed me much. I ended up picking one up for the Gamecube and played through it and ended up really disliking it. I was always more of Street Fighter fan anyway. But, when I played the demo for this one, I was pleasantly surprised. It has gone back to its 2D roots and that's cool. Its definitely a pretty game using the newest version of the Unreal Engine 3 but sadly, a part of the game still sticks to it, and that is that the game still won't finish you with a Fatality. If its an environmental, it will but from what I've seen, the fatality commands are still just as complicated for the computer as it is for the player, or the game still just wants to torture you. That's what they're there for! To separate and identify the game. However, what I do like is how cuts and injury remain throughout the match and that's awesome.

Well, then Kratos was announced for Mortal Kombat PS3. I sat there scratching my head and thought, wow, that's really lame. What does Kratos have to do with Mortal Kombat? Though it still doesn't make much sense to me, and it feels gimmicky inside the game, what goes on externally, makes sense and is so fitting and it all made sense with an interview with Stig Asmussen, the Design Director of God of War III. Then, as I was watching something about the God of War games, it suddenly hit me full circle.

You see, Stig hasn't been working at Sony Santa Monica his whole career and certainly didn't start there. However, Stig did work with the development teams that worked on Mortal Kombat. So Stig has been there and during his interviews with several people had made mention of that.

In those interviews, Stig had explained why Kratos' personality seemed so fitting for the game. Mortal Kombat is about anger, hatred, blood and ripping someone apart and watching their entrails drop to the ground or dropping them into a pit Sparta style. "This is Sparta!" Kratos fits that persona perfectly. He's angry, he likes to rip people apart and his games are gory. How does that not fit in Mortal Kombat. Agreeably and where I'm still confused, is how a Spartan fits into Mortal Kombat. But, his personality is justfied.

Finally, I don't know about anyone else, but this is the thing that got me. Stig past seems to show up in God of War III. Something Stig wasn't able to quite leave behind. Some unfinished business.

What's interesting about this screen shot of the final showdowns first part between Kratos and Zeus, is that is had Mortal Kombat written all over it, actually. This showdown is closely zoomed in, while a good chunk of the game is zoomed out to show the games scale, but this is zoomed in full screen and is what some describe as 2.5 style. Its a fight scene done in a fighter game sort of style with mass amounts of blood and brutality, just like in Mortal Kombat. Its all right there. Some of Stigs former career work shows up in a God of War game, and goes right back to where he probably started.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments section below and keep checking back for more about Kratos, more about Motal Kombat and stay in the Gamer Zone with news on all things gaming.