PS3 owners have known for months that Kratos is crashing the Mortal Kombat reboot. Now they finally get to see him fight. A new video that has appeared on YouTube gives the first look at the Ghost of Sparta in actual gameplay, and while the glimpse is brief, it is enough to show that NetherRealm Studios has brought a good chunk of God of War along with him.
A Brief First Look At Kratos In Action
The clip, which GamingBolt flagged earlier today, is a longer cut of Mortal Kombat footage rather than a dedicated Kratos trailer. According to Japanese site Game*Spark, Kratos only gets around 17 seconds of screen time, starting roughly 78 seconds in, but in that window he pulls off attacks fans will recognize from his own series. The rest of the video covers other fighters tearing into each other, a look at the online King of the Hill mode and a Raiden fatality. The capture quality is not great, so some of the finer detail is hard to make out, and it is not clear whether the footage comes from an official source.
Guest characters are nothing new for fighting games, but dropping a Sony mascot into Mortal Kombat is a big swing, and the obvious question has always been whether Kratos would feel like Kratos or like a reskinned brawler. This footage is too short to settle that, but the God of War flavor in his moves is a promising start.
A PS3 Exclusive Guest Since December
Kratos was confirmed for Mortal Kombat back in December through PlayStation: The Official Magazine. He is exclusive to the PS3 version and comes with his own finishing moves, his own attacks and a God of War themed arena, though he does not take part in the game’s story mode.
The news went down well with at least one person who knows the character intimately. David Jaffe, director of the original God of War, reacted on Twitter at the time with “LOVE that Kratos is in the new MK,” while admitting he was a little disappointed Kratos would not appear in the story. Jaffe also said he first heard about the plan from Ed Boon at E3 last year, as Gematsu reported in December when the news broke.
Mortal Kombat Arrives April 19
The rest of Mortal Kombat is shaping up as a serious return to form for the series. NetherRealm has taken the game back to a two dimensional fighting plane with modern 3D visuals, while the story mode retells the events of the first three Mortal Kombat games. Tag team battles for up to four players, a Challenge Tower stuffed with missions and the series’ trademark Fatalities round out the package. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment publishes the game.
Mortal Kombat is due April 19 in North America on PS3 and Xbox 360. Expect a cleaner look at Kratos before then, and with launch less than a month away, it would be a surprise if Warner Bros. did not have an official gameplay trailer for him lined up soon.