What we finally got our hands-on time with at Capcom's Spring Gamer's Day event was a little meatier than anything shown off thus far, with perhaps 50% of it being completely new content. We were walked through some of the basics of using the Devil Arm (specifically the ability to press the Circle Button when near enemies to slam them into the ground with a move called Buster), and generally just eased back into the combat. After running around a sun-kissed courtyard garden and fountain, we skulked around the inside of the gothic castle, climbed up to the roof and used the Devil Arm to zip around high above all the chaos happening below, then spilled out into the waterfront areas seen previously. After zipping around here a bit using the Arm to cross long distances (and enjoying a bit of the game's cinematic motion blur as well), we battled more baddies, rekindled our love with those familiar switches that required beating on them for a while until they lit up completely and shattered a blue barrier, then flicked as switch to lower a bridge.

Well, "flicked" is perhaps the wrong word. "Smashed with a fist and then shot out of frustration" is more appropriate, but it's lengthy. Luckily, we just started a new paragraph, hooray! With the bridge lowered (and a few more enemies encounters to break things up, of course), we were able to cross and continue to one of the new areas of the game, the snowy peaks seen in the initial teaser clip shown off at Sony's Pre-E3 2005 Press Conference (capitalizing it almost makes us forget how many of those clips were pre-rendered videos). It should be noted that if you run for long enough, Nero breaks into a speedier sprint, a move that we can't remember being in previous games, and something that thankfully cuts down on running all over the place -- including the snowed-in mountainside we crept up.

After surveying a castle far off in the distance in a nice little nod to the Castlevania series (complete with thundering organ music), we were greeted by a toppling tower that completely wiped out the bridge Nero was standing on. When he got to his feet, it was time for a lengthy (and difficult) battle with the Frosts. Because they could both teleport and regenerate health -- not to mention kick more than a little ass with both ranged and close-up attacks of their own -- the duel went on for quite a while. Columns scattered all over the level would cough up green souls for health, but it was still a tough battle. The marionette enemies from the earlier sections of the game could be brought down with the Devil Arm's Buster move, but the Frosts actually required being swing around 360 degrees a few times before getting thrown into something to really make an impact.

After about five minutes of fighting (yes, for just a couple of enemies, we suck like that), we managed to finish them off and ran through a gate, warping to the final part of the TGS demo. But where that demo ended with the Balrog-meets-Ifrit intro of Bariel, a massive quadrupedal fire demon, we got to see the full confrontation, and it. Was. Awesome. After racing from a sealed door, Bariel thunked down into what appeared to be an abandoned mining town. The demon sets everything aflame before Nero and he cross paths for a second and Nero winds up and with a single move uses a massive gust of wind to kill the flames. Bariel treats this as a sign of disrespect, and of course Nero just mouths off more to make sure the fire demon gets the point. In an awesome, epic show of just how powerful Nero really is, an enraged Bariel winds up with his massive sword and prepares to swat away the hero. Nero simply reaches out with his own sword and stops the incoming strike dead, leaving the tip of his sword glowing white-hot.