GameSpot has come through with the very first impressions of Mortal Kombat: Deception, complete with a trailer of footage from the game! From the article: As with every installment in the series, our first viewing of the trailer had us looking out for which fighters we recognized. The heavily edited clip and the grainy filter used to give the piece a nicely gritty look made it a challenge to single out everyone, but we feel pretty confident in naming a few folks. Baraka is back in all his toothy, blade-wielding glory. Three ninjas in the clip, each bearing one of the three colors from the classic MK ninja rainbow, make it pretty obvious some old friends are also returning. The first two ninjas appear to be Scorpion and Sub-Zero, and it looks like they're sporting fashionable updates of their classic looks. The third ninja, clad in red, is what we would certainly like to hope is Ermac. Mileena is also back, in what appears to be two purple outfits. While a variation on her original togs is in the mix, a new Jennifer Lopez-inspired ensemble is also on hand. It should be noted that both outfits appear to possess powerful magical properties, as they hang tough to Mileena's junk real good, even in the midst of combat. We also caught a few flashes of other characters who were harder to identify. A very brief flash of a battle between two characters toward the end of the trailer shows what could be Nightwolf; it's a stretch, we know, but we could swear we see deerskin boots and a tomahawk. As for the second fighter, clad in white with a funky hat, we're not sure. The color scheme is wrong for Raiden, unless he's gotten a makeover, which is possible. The last potential member of the cast--which we'll admit is a long shot, but we'll throw it out there anyway--could be Shao Kahn. During the dramatic cuts in parts of the trailer, a very Shao Kahn-like helmet appears several times. We never actually see him in action at all, so we may be stoking the sure-to-be-busy rumor mill, but we'd like to think that we know our skull-shaped metallic helmets pretty well. The article also goes in-depth about the look of the stages: As for the arenas you'll be duking it out in, we saw precious little of these environments, although we did pick out what appeared to be six different areas. We already briefly touched on an arena set atop a large pillar in the midst of an abyss. You can see mountains and a temple in the distance. Another arena with a similar theme is set atop the roof of a building during a rain shower. Yet another arena appears to be set in a good old apocalyptic wasteland, complete with bodies on pikes. The last few areas we saw offered a change of pace from the unholy locales. A factory, complete with the pool of flaming hot lava you always seem to find in them, was briefly shown. The interior of a castle, which seems to have troublesome floors, was on display as well. The most intriguing of the areas shown has a nice Hellraiser touch in the form of bodies apparently swinging from chains. We'll be curious to see if the corpses wind up being interactive during combat. The article also makes mention of the online play, though not saying much more than the fact that online-play is only confirmed for X-Box and Playstation 2. We'll keep you informed as more news becomes available.

To read the article in its entirety and see the trailer, click here.

Our thanks to forum/chat member Baraka_MK for the heads-up on this article!

UPDATE: Jason "skizelli" Shearer was good enough to provide us with these screen captures from the video. Simply click on the thumbnails for larger images.


UPDATE: We have confirmed through an anonymous source within Midway that the red ninja is in fact Ermac! This should end speculation concerning the identity of at least one of the new fighters. Our thanks to our source for the heads-up!