At long last, after months of anticipation, Mortal Kombat has finally been released. After all the speculation, all the hype, can it really live up to people's expectations? Well, you already know what we think, so judge for yourselves.

With all the extra content crammed into the game, fans would have a hard time putting this one down. PS3 owners in particular have extra incentive to start playing, due to exclusive character Kratos of the God Of War franchise being included. 360 owners have accepted that they won't have an exclusive of their own, but would probably be interested to know that one was considered for inclusion.

Mortal Kombat creator and member of NetherRealm Studios, Ed Boon, explained that they were planning to include a character for Xbox 360 owners. He said that most of the development team had Twitter accounts so they could directly interact with fans of the series, and often paid close attention to what fans were saying.

They understood that a number of fans wanted their own character for 360, and hinted that long-time icons of the system, Master Chief of the Halo series and Marcus Fenix of Gears Of War fame, were both considered for the new Mortal Kombat. This supported the story going around that Gears of War developer Epic Games offering to chat with NetherRealm Studios.

So what happened? Good question.

Ed Boon explained that they didn't flat out say "no, let's not include a character for the 360". They wanted to make one, but some unforeseen circumstances prevented them from doing so. Boon also said that he wasn't at liberty to discuss just what those circumstances were. Bottom line, they wanted to include a character for 360, but just couldn't.

What could've prevented them from including Master Chief or Marcus Fenix in the 360 port of Mortal Kombat? Could they not get the rights to the character in time? Well, that might explain why the hero of Halo couldn't make it, but as explained, Epic Games was willing to have a talk with NetherRealm. Maybe it was a decision from within? Was someone in the team not willing to make another character? Or did this veto come from higher up, from Warner Bros. Interactive?

Marcus Fenix and Dom both appeared in Lost Planet 2 so was it Microsoft saying no to allowing Epic Games to partake? Interestingly enough, Microsoft did say no to Portal 2 allowing Steam and cross-platform play on the Xbox 360, while the PS3 takes full advantage of that and now an exclusive Mortal Kombat character.

Leave your thoughts on this matter in the comments below.

Mortal Kombat is out now for the Xbox 360 and PS3.

Source: Eurogamer