The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Hands-On Preview

To be quite honest, one of the main reasons I laid down $29 for my ticket to the Nintendo Fusion Tour was for my first great chance of getting my hands on the Twilight Princess demo. It was confirmed shortly before the Tour actually started that one of the main features of the Nintendo displays would be a playable demo of the upcoming epic Zelda game. That fact alone had me giddy for weeks, as I was able to convince some friends to join me and take us along with them on the day it arrived to our city. I was daydreaming day and night what it would be like to finally see what it was like. I was so anxious to do battle on the legendary Epona, see Link in his most mature form ever and see some of the most jaw dropping graphics we’ve seen to date on the GameCube.

Sure Resident Evil 4 probably has the best rendered graphics so far on the GameCube right now, but Twilight Princess will without a doubt rival that on the fantasy level it’s driven with. People out there who claim that Nintendo doesn’t know how to get games with great/realistic graphics need to shove a sock in their mouth or something because they are just generalizing Nintendo how the mainstream has. I guarantee if you show those people games like Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil and Twilight Princess, they are bound to shut up. Getting back on track, unfortunately I didn’t experience everything the demo had to offer because of the high demand to play it, but what I did was more than what I could’ve wanted to convince me that it was epic.

I first laid my hands on the controller after the person in front of me decided to quit playing the game and view the next featured band. Yeah, I thought he was incredibly stupid for doing that but to each his own. This had me started in the part of Toaru Village in which Link is given the task of helping a local cattle herder. He is requested to make use of his horse riding skills and Epona to get all of his grazing cattle back into the barn in which they are supposed to situated. This has Link pull out a strange looking whistle and you pressing the A button to initialize its use. Unfortunately the band just began playing as I did this so I have no idea what it sounded like, but we’ll just assume it sounded like a whistle.

After some odd number of seconds, Epona came rushing from a gate to your side, and you are off to accomplish your task. You walk to Epona’s side, waiting for the A button command prompt to mount her saddle, and then begin your herding. Of course the music that ensues while you’re working is very reminiscent of past Zelda games when you are doing tasks like that. It was very quirky and upbeat, keeping the somewhat repetitive action interesting. Your task is to herd some 25 cattle in a certain period of time into the barn by simply galloping near them and using the “Whoop!” command to get them to run where you want them to go. Preferably that would be into the barn. Now obviously not all of them will cooperate, so it will take a stronger effort on your part to get the task complete in a timely manner. It’s rather funny too how some of the cattle will get angry with you, start flashing red and bash into Epona, knocking you to the ground. You aren’t hurt or anything by the action, but it does put some extra seconds on the clock that you don’t exactly need.

The only thing that can be annoying about finishing this task is the claustrophobic feel of the field. That doesn’t mean that you feel like you’re trapped in it or anything, but maneuver Epona effectively in such a small area wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to do. It was rather tough especially at the edges where either the fencing or a rather large hill you have to turn Epona and get her to gallop the opposite direction. But overall it was a fun endeavor and not too difficult to pull off within a satisfactory time span. Once you are finished getting all the cattle back to their intended destination, you are challenged with a small gate jumping exercise “just for fun”. Of course you do so, utilizing the carrots you should remember from Ocarina of Time to clear each jump. However, in the process of doing so, you not only unintentionally injure Epona, but you upset the Mayor’s daughter. When you clear the final gate, the game shifts to a scene with you talking to the Mayor of Toaru Village and how he wishes for you to be their representative at the next Hyrule Summit. For some reason the original nominee isn’t available and somehow you are chosen to take his place. Then the girl makes an appearance, notices Epona has a cut above one of her hooves, and gives you a nice scolding as a result. It’s rather humorous too, as she gives both Link and the Mayor a guilt trip about being responsible and taking care of animals. She eventually takes Epona away to go to a healing spring to help her fix the wound. This is where I cut off that little episode to go onto the other available part of the demo.