TSG Game Review - Grill-Off with Ultra Hand

May 15, 2010

Club Nintendo has a lot of stuff on it. Unfortunately, a lot of it is useless. Grill-Off with Ultra Hand, on the other hand (oh-ho-ho), is not useless! This WiiWare title is the best 80 coins you’ll ever spend! Cook the meat and put on a plate! This title is the best award you can get for an affordable price, basically registering one DS game and one Wii game.

Club Nintendo is awesome. It’s hard to complain against the ability to get free swag and games from your gaming purchases. Most of the items available are more novelty items like posters, Hanafuda cards, game cases and more, but there are some actual games available through Club Nintendo. Most notably, the Game and Watch collection titles are available, but they charge a ridiculous amount of 800 coins (for those of you who don’t have a North American Club Nintendo account, that’s a lot!).These games successfully hold the title of some of the most expensive items currently available on Club Nintendo. What do you do when you need a Club Nintendo gaming fix, but only have a mere hundred coins? Get Grill-Off with Ultra Hand – an arcade-style WiiWare title exclusive to Club Nintendo members.

Grill-Off with Ultra Hand is a grilling title where players uses one of Nintendo’s earliest successful products ・the Ultra Hand. The Ultra Hand was toy that can be extended using large handles. The other end of the device had a claw like mechanism to grab objects and bring them back to the user. In Grill-Off with Ultra Hand, you extend a Ultra Hand to pull cooked pieces of meat off of grills and put them onto a plate to score points. If you pick up the meat as soon as it finishes cooking, you get bonus points and start building a score multiplier. As most arcade style games, Grill-off with Ultra Hand picks up in pace and increases in difficulty the longer you play: more pieces of meat will appear on the grill at one time, food will start cooking faster, and different kinds of meat that cook at different speeds. If you drop or burn even a single piece of meat, it is game over. The title is easy to pick-up and play, but still stays challenging. It is very similar to a lot of titles you see on the iPhone app store nowadays.

Grill-Off with Ultra Hand mimics using an Ultra Hand with the use of the Wii Remote and Nun-chuck. The player tilt the Wii Remote and Nun-chuck inward and outward like the handles extend and retract the on-screen Ultra Hand. The motion controls work well for the most part, but occasionally there is a bit of a hiccup which can easily send you right to the game over screen. Because of the rate you will be moving your arms to extend the Ultra Hand, the controls can quickly become tiresome. But being an arcade-style game, you probably won’t be playing for prolonged periods of time.

Aside from the single player mode, there is also a two-player multiplayer mode. The mode has a fairly basic race for the highest score. Each player has two grills assigned to them. If food is burnt or dropped from a grill, the player who’s in control of that grill will lose points. Players can also steal meat off of their opponent’s grills for extra points.

There isn’t much in terms of replay value aside from building a better score and competing in multiplayer. Even the pattern at which meat drops seems to be preset, although it is hard to notice when you have a hurricane of meat falling on your grills. There is a local leader-board, but the lack of online leader-boards is a bit of a disappointment.

Really, it is hard to complain about Grill-Off With Ultra Hand since it is essentially a free game. The title is the cheapest of awards on Club Nintendo and probably gives you the most bang for your buck…er coin. If you like fast fun arcade action, give Grill-Off with Ultra Hand a shot. It will only cost you a measly 80 coins.

So, what are you waiting for? Join Club Nintendo today, Mac, and get your copy of Grill-Off With Ultra-Hand!