The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GameCube) Preview

It isn't too long before our musing is interrupted though. We come across two repitial beasts that are more than willing to be killed in a devastating attack of button mastery. Even defeating enemies as simple as these ones looks impressive in Twilight Princess. Swiping and slashing with his sword, locking onto and strafing around enemies before delivering a new and devastating attack, there are certainly one or two hidden away. When an enemy falls down defeated, you can perform a powerful downward thrust movement with your sword that just oozes mastery and looks simply terrific.

Killing animation gets better with better enemies though. A few minutes later we come across a hideous looking spider of substantial size, after giving it a face full of sword it falls to the ground stunned, we instantly see the chance to test out Mr. Downthrust again and deliver a powerful blow that calls for an explosion of God-know-what that dissipates into the air. Marvellous.

We then spot a chest that is just begging to be opened, and after some classic Zelda music bringing a smile to our faces, we see we have acquired the Gale Boomerang. And would you believe it? The next puzzle is boomerang based, how convenient! A door remains locked, and the only way to unlock it is by throwing your newly acquired boomerang. After a few successful lobs at the target we are let though. What is interesting here is how you throw the 'rang. When using it the viewpoint is switched to a first-person perspective, and there is a red section, when it is positioned over certain points yellow icons rotate about it, meaning they can be locked onto. A quick slap of the R button and you are successfully locked on. You can lock on to multiple targets too, in sequence. Clever stuff indeed.

Now for the monkey. A cut-scene kicks in which shows a small monkey being chased by a baboon. Just as the little monkey makes it over a bridge, the baboon whips out his very own boomerang and throw it at him, it tears through the ropes holding the bridge up and it comes falling down. The baboon obviously looks delighted, brandishes his buttocks about a bit, spanks himself and runs away.

The smaller far less sexual monkey gestures for Link to follow him, and we are not the sort of people to ignore a gesturing monkey, so we obliged. What ensues is a bizarre gaming moment, environment puzzles between Link and a monkey. As an example, at one point there is a gap that is simply too large for little Link to jump, so up jumps Monkey onto a rope, up jumps Link onto the monkey and man (elf) and monkey swing across to safety together.

The lighting effects when using the lantern are also of note, just like people were amazed at how good Luigi's Mansion could do light, here Nintendo have moved up the bar just about every notch possible. The light from the lantern, flickers, jumps and dances about with awesome realism and it looks almost magical.

No Zelda demo would be complete without some sort of stupidly big boss fight to get all American teenagers running about E3 excited, and this one is no different. CEOs, Founders and Editors of various very important American publications were running about with very happy grins on their fat faces having played this final demo, and to be honest I can see why.

A giant plant thing has infested the Forest Temple, and we have to dodge it and use the Gale Rang's power to destroy it. The tentacle-clad bugger jumps out of a muddy, putrid lake, its two tentacles attacking poor Link constantly. Thankfully, there are bombs dotted about your surroundings. All you have to do is use your boomerang to move the bomb from the ground, to the plant-thing's mouth and then wait for a bang. Do this enough times and it will expire. First you target the bomb and then lock onto one of the plant-thing's lovely heads. Throw it, the bomb sails through the air and 'BOOM!' lots of lovely mess.

Just when we think we've beaten the bugger, he slumps into his smelly pit, only to emerge again, this time even bigger and more deadly. Spewing purple poison and throwing his tentacles at us, and with no bombs left we stand no chance, until the sexual arse-spanking baboon returns with some lovely bombs! Targeting the bombs on the baboon and once again boomeranging them at the plant-thing is quite tricky, but once you get the hang of it the slimy thing should soon be gone for good.