Grill Off with Ultra Hand! Review

This and the next Club Nintendo review should have been posted over a month ago when they were first released, but alas, real life hit and I had other priorities. So here is the first of what's to be many reviews this month. Grill Off with Ultra Hand! is the first of hopefully many Club Nintendo exclusive WiiWare titles, and goes for just 80 Coins, the cheapest reward available from the North American program as of now. But it's not the truly first WiiWare title available from the service, as the real first, Doc Louis's Punch-Out!!, was available for Platinum members last year.

Background
Grill Off with Ultra Hand! is a WiiWare game featuring one of Nintendo's earliest creations, the Ultra Hand, an extending toy that allowed you to grab objects from a distance. It has since appeared in numerous games, mainly in the WarioWare titles, but this marks its first starring appearance since the toy's original release.


Gameplay
There really isn't that much to this game, and for 80 Coins, I guess I'm not supposed to expect much. There are two modes, Single Player and Vs. Play, but each basically play the same. You use the Wiimote and nunchuck just as you would hold the actual Ultra Hand toy, twisting them at the same time in a hedge-clipper like motion. Doing this makes the on-screen Ultra Hand grab a piece of meat, place it on the barbeque, and then grab it again to put on a plate. The single player is an endless mode of this, competing on a leaderboard for the highest score, where as the versus mode (only two players) has both players competing for the best score in a 90 second time limit. And overall, the experience isn't very enjoyable or long lasting. If you'd like to see it yourself before dropping 80 Coins on this, check the game's official website.

Final Thoughts
Unlike Doc Louis's Punch-Out!!, there's nothing overly exclusive about Grill Off with Ultra Hand!. Exclusive as in, it's not a case where you have only 30 days to claim your prize and that's the only chance you'll ever get to actually get the game, where there would be a feeling of exclusivity when you take the chance of redeeming the game. Sure, it's exclusive to Club Nintendo, but you can get it whenever, and even read/watch reviews before saying, "I actually want to waste my 80 Coins". In my case, I just had an ever-growing amount of coins and nothing worthwhile to spend them on, so 80 didn't seem like much of a risk; too bad I'll never touch this game again.

Overall Score: 3/10