I really like the look and feel of the new and darkly improved Link. I got a chance to play part of a level of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess last night and it was pretty impressive.

I played part of a boss level. The end monster was this giant dragon-like creature that had two tentacles that ended in bulbous like mouths. The game did a good job of making defeating the end creator more of puzzle-solving process then just hacking and slashing. I had to figure out what exactly to do to take out the baddie. But it also wasn t pure puzzle because I then had to actually perform the actions that I figured out would take down the bad guy.

The part of the game I was playing saw Link armed with a sword, shield and boomerang. The boomerang could charge up and unleash a cool tornado effect that could actually grab an item and bring it back to you.

The scenery and background for the game was fairly detailed, the end-creature level included falling snow or perhaps leaves and didn t slow the game down at all. All of the graphics for the game are really impressive, but I was especially impressed by the look of horseback riding.

It looks like Nintendo put a lot of thought into this latest Zelda game, picking up the fact that the game had to go in a different direction and deliver something much darker, deeper and more life-like.

Check back tomorrow afternoon to read my one-on-one interview with the game s co-producer Eiji Aonuma.