Resident Evil 4 [GC]

All good things eventually come to an end. Sadly, this phrase holds true of the latest preview version of Resident Evil 4, a three-hour tour through the haunting woods, graveyards, villages, mansions and caves of Capcom's survival horror creep-a-thon, which is slated to debut for GameCube on January 11 of next year. The new build successfully accomplished what no scary movie ever has and kept us on the edge of our seats, quite often on the verge of frightened bursts of emotion, for its entire duration. And the spooks and thrills were capped off by a demo-ending boss fight with an awful, water-dwelling beast that we lovingly call the Thing Under the Lake.

The lake monster is significant to us for two reasons, both important: it is the first boss encounter we've had the privilege of playing in Resident Evil 4. We know there are more on the way, including a battle with El Gigante, a huge ogre-like beast that looks to be plucked directly from the Lord of the Rings movies. But the Thing Under the Lake has - ever since we first glimpsed its murky presence in year-old screenshots - always held a special place in our hearts. Second, this unpredictable boss battle demonstrates in full just how different Resident Evil 4 is from any other survival horror outing. It's more cinematic than just about any boss fight we've ever witnessed. It's grand in scale. And it offers a level of control and freedom that let's just call unexpected for a Resident Evil game. We were certainly surprised by it. That is, when we weren't too busy marveling at the thing's sheer size or desperately thumbing the controls in lame, poorly orchestrated attempts to survive.

We have of course snapped screenshots, direct from the playable demo, and you can scroll through the length of this article to see them. And more importantly, we've included nine new movies that show off this gorgeous boss battle, as well as other areas from the game and new items like the rocket launcher, in our media section. If you have a broadband connection, do yourself a favor and download the videos. They are some of the best yet. But just for you bookworms, we have included a breakdown of our encounter with the Thing Under the Lake, and after reading it we hope you'll have some idea of why we decided to dedicate an entire article to the monster.

Hordes of villagers have been slaughtered. Gunned down with the pistol. Blown apart by the shotgun. Incinerated by hand grenades. The chainsaw man has come at hero Leon S. Kennedy twice, and twice he has died. The village chief, a humungous, bearded man with an evil stare and a trench coat, has choked Leon out a couple of times. The character has met up with a former police officer named Luis. He has bought new weapons from traders located about the eerie world, sometimes positioned in underground caves. He has even solved some traditional survival horror-esque puzzles while frantically dodging insane villagers in a graveyard. And somehow, he's survived.

But when Kennedy finally makes his way through a mountainous path and to a huge cliff that overlooks an even bigger lake, we know what's coming and we're not quite sure if our hero's luck will hold up. An in-game cut-scene seamlessly continues the storyline. Two villagers are out on that lake. Leon uses his binoculars to zoom in on the unsuspecting enemies. It turns out they are disposing of a dead police man's body. Leon curses to himself. They dump the man into the water and then slowly drive their two-man boat away, muttering in Spanish. The water begins to shimmer. A little more. And then we can see that there's something underneath. Something very big. The lake monster bursts from the water, devours the floating body, and then it's gone.

Another path curves down and around to a lakeside dock and, almost unfortunately, a boat. The capsule is just big enough for a single person. There's a save point right before it. You can save in Resident Evil 4 whenever you find a typewriter, and they're located all around the world. You don't need ribbons. And because saves only cost you 14 blocks of data, you can create as many files as your memory card can hold. Incidentally, we have about 15 saves in different parts of the world on our dedicated memory card.

We know that as soon as Leon gets into the boat, we're going to come into contact with the horrifying Thing Under the Lake and we're reluctant to trigger the sequence, mainly because we also know that as soon as we beat it the demo will inevitably come to an end. But against our better judgment, we walk closer to the boat, anyway. As we approach, one of the game's many context-sensitive actions pops up. We can make Leon jump into the boat by pressing the A button, an on-screen display explains. We do. Once he's in, we discover that we have a surprising amount of control over the vehicle. We previously figured that we would not be able to drive it - that instead the entire sequence would be on rails, or predetermined to follow a set path. Not the case at all. We can pilot the boat around the giant lake at our discretion, and it moves with tight and responsive analog precision. If we press the R button, meanwhile, Leon grabs a harpoon from the boat and holds it up as if to throw it; a target reticule also centers on-screen. Our goal is clear: find this gigantic lake monster and harpoon it until it dies.