The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks Preview

Visually it's superb, as we'd expect from Nintendo.

Now, I suspect that some of you may be a little bemused by all this. Has Nintendo really turned The Legend of Zelda into a train-based shmup - a shooter set on rails, if not a rail-based shooter? Well… no, not exactly. It’s admittedly a fairly weird idea to turn Link into a card-carrying member of ASLEF, but the core action works very well. The combat is fun, while the game world boasts all the colour and charm you’d expect from an entry in this series. The train section of the E3 demo closed with a set-piece battle against a giant spider-like monster that chased Link’s chuffa chuffa (goddamn it!) through a cave. Here the player was forced to blast the creature’s single eye and the occasional track-side explosive in an effort to slow the beast down. This was the only point in my playtest where the action felt purely arcadey, but the whole episode was done so well that I really didn’t mind.

Besides, it’s important to remember that a large part of the game will feature the more familiar Link-on-foot gameplay. The dungeon I sampled was pure Cream of Zelda Soup: plenty of monsters to bash, simple-yet-clever puzzles to solve and a selection of toys to build the dungeon around. In this case, Link was accompanied by a Phantom - a haunted suit of armour that did his bidding, last seen as a baddie in previous DS outing Phantom Hourglass. As was the case in that game, all of Link’s movements and attacks are mapped to simple swipes of the stylus - but here you can also control your clanking metal servant. Draw a line from the Phantom to another spot in the dungeon, and he’ll go stomping off to that destination. Send him to an enemy or to a switch, and he’ll walk over to give them a smack.

As you might expect, this mechanic works beautifully well. One puzzle asks you to use the Phantom’s hulking frame to block incoming jets of flame, allowing Link safe passage; another demands that you send your chum off to hit two switches while you deal with another pair yourself, hitting all four blocks in the correct order. There are also moments where you have to climb aboard the Phantom’s shoulders so that he can ferry you across impassable, lava-filled pits. And though my playtest in the dungeon only extended to ten minutes or so, I really grew quite attached to my iron bodyguard.

The final part of Nintendo’s E3 demo was a boss battle, pitching Link against a large flying beetle. As is traditionally the case with Zelda’s big nasties, this villain can only be defeated by pulling off a particular trick. During the dungeon section of the demo I was introduced to a Deku Leaf-like weapon, a pinwheel activated by blowing into the DS microphone. Normally it’s used to stun enemies to activate certain switches, but here it becomes an important form of attack. After taking a few sword hits to his vulnerable rear end, the boss takes to the air and starts to drop miniature bugs into the arena. If hit, these foes puff up into spiked balls that act a bit like insect landmines. To win the fight, Link must prime these enemies and then blow them into the beetle as it swoops down to attack. Once again, it’s a neat little battle that bears all the hallmarks of vintage Zelda.

So there we go: Spirit Tracks is a mixture of the old and the new. The train seems to have gone down like a vomit sandwich with a number of Link fans, but really there’s no reason why this should be anything other than great. True enough, there’s a certain pressure on any new Zelda game to match the quality of everything that’s gone before, but Nintendo has yet to put a foot wrong. The epic queues in LA remind us that there are a lot of people waiting for Spirit Tracks; with any luck that patience will be amply rewarded.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is due out on the Nintendo DS Christmas 2009.