E3: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks Hands On

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The twist this time revolves around a new use for the stylus - a mechanic that, in timeless Zelda style, is introduced in simple steps, before being twisted and toyed with until you're dealing with some brilliantly devious implementations. As Link makes his way through a fairly simple arrangement of puzzle rooms, he's joined by the hulking armour-clad form of a phantom, a giant automaton with a massive sword, who can be guided about by drawing a line on the floor.

At first it's a simple matter of using him to step on one half of a double switch-plate to open a door, but the uses the game puts him to steadily build up. Some are obvious - the phantom can be sent on ahead to attack electrified enemies for you - but some are significantly slyer, and after the third room, you're using your huge bodyguard as a portable shield while you pass by a series of hot vents, sending him through walls of flames to hit switches that lie on the other side, and sending him into lakes of lava, before hopping onto his head, and walking him across to the opposite bank.

For other, less imaginative teams, it would be an idea to be wrung dry in a few simple situations - Spirit Tracks manages to get almost an entire dungeon out of it, with no sense that the developer is even close to scraping the bottom of the barrel. And when the phantom finally steps aside, there's the dungeon's special item to mess around with, a weapon called the Whirlwind, which allows you to blow powerful gusts across a room, stunning enemies, turning those familiar acorn switches, and dispelling dangerous purple smoke.

Frogs on the ceiling? Must be Zelda.

A fairly standard variation on a handful of previous Zelda toys, the Whirlwind plays a major roll in the boss fight that takes up the last third of the demo. At the centre of the dungeon lurks a giant grey insect, with the buzzing wings of a dragonfly capable of lofting his tubby form into the air, and a set of deadly mandible positioned like antlers above his pinched little face. Again, striking at the glowing weak spot on his back is hardly a novel experience, but Nintendo's team adds a little bit of twitch skill, as you expose an area to attack by switching to the Whirlwind to blow away noxious clouds, and then varies the assault with a swooping move that knocks Link from his ledge if you aren't careful.