The last time we took Twilight Princess out for a spin caused us no small amount of grief. As cool as the Wii remote is, it felt like traditional games aren't quite meant for the two-handed, motion-sensitive device. Since that time, Nintendo's announced a whole new setup for Link's absurdly anticipated adventure, now exclusively relying on the remote instead of a standard controller.
After today's Wii briefing, we got our eager hands back on Princess to see if the new way's any better. Well, for starters, you wave the wand back and forth to swing your sword. That's either super cool or insanely agitating - we still can't decide. It never got in the way of slicing through giant lizard men, but sure didn't enhance the experience a great deal. Based on this, we'd be content to play it with a GameCube controller.
The D-pad, located just above the giant A button on the remote, has a weapon assigned to each direction. In this demo, which was the same we played at E3, the bow, iron boots and gale boomerang were all available. While aiming with arrows or the boomerang, you point with the remote and look around with the analog stick, which makes you completely immobile. We'd try to aim for some fire-arrow launching jerkholes but would have to come to a complete stop to do it, taking plenty of annoying hits the whole time.
The Nunchuk controller can be shaken to juke Link's shield at an enemy, striking it off-balance. Shaking it even more does the well-known spin-slash attack that's been around since A Link to the Past. Again, standard moves done in a different way... just not anything special. Princess looks and feels like a brand-new Zelda, not a showcase for new technology like Super Mario 64 was.
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