This game was world exclusive to the members of Club Nintendo. That was pretty awesome and while it probably meant that the game was rather cheap to produce, it was pretty thoughtful on their part. As Club Nintendo closed its doors for the last time, I had exactly enough points to buy this title. After seeing the “epic” live action trailer on the site, how could I not be intrigued? Let’s just say that motion controls get in the way here.

Essentially, you’re grilling in this game. There’s no story mode as there is just an infinite arcade mode like in Pac Man as well as a Vs Mode option. You use the wii remote and nunchuk to reach out to the grill by tilting your remotes towards each other and then press A to grab the piece of meat. Next, you tilt your remotes away from each other and release to let it go. You have to rinse and repeat as you try to grab all of the meat at just the right time for bonus points. If you drop one too close to the grill or burn a piece, then you automatically lose.

In theory, this game had the potential to be the next Flappy Bird or Pac Man. At least, that seems to be what the game developers were gunning for here. The problem is not the actual gameplay, but the controls. The Wii Remotes simply aren’t good for this kind of thing as they will constantly make you let the meat go or not move when you want too. It makes playing the game a bit of a struggle and it’s hard to have fun when your remote keeps sabotaging your efforts to win.

Otherwise, it’s a great concept that works flawlessly. The gameplay is addicting and it’s easy to get into the game since it just starts up right away. It’s the kind of game where you can have fun competing with a friend for the high score. Even if it didn’t have a local Vs. Mode, you could just take turns or post your scores online. The scores get higher and higher as you go on so you really want to increase your combos. Each piece of meat will then be worth up to 9 meats from the beginning part of the game.

The graphics are decent I suppose. There’s not much to look at as you are always on the same stage with a very limited selection of meats at the ready. This must have made animating the game rather easy for the developers. It’s still not going to be one of the greatest games that you have ever seen as far as graphics go, but it looks good enough.

The soundtrack is also limited of course, but the main theme when you pick the title from the startup menu is catchy. There’s not much more to say about that. This is the kind of game that you may have felt bad about if you paid 20-30 dollars for it, but it’s a free game. There’s literally no way to buy it from stores unless you decide to purchase a copy from a friend or on Ebay. Because of that, you can’t say that it’s a rip-off. How can something that’s free be a rip-off right? More effort probably could have been put into the game, but it’s simply as advanced as your average phone or mobile app game. In that sense, this title succeeds.

Overall, Grill Off With Ultra Hand is slightly worse than I expected and you can totally blame that on the controls. If you could play this with Gamecube controls, I can guarantee at least a 2 point boost and it could maybe try for 3 depending on how much I felt like replaying the game. The replay value is really the main incentive of this game and it should be rather high, but the controls negate that. I recommend grabbing this from Club Nintendo while you can since it will be out of print soon. It may not be much, but it’s free and it’ll be a good way to say goodbye to Club Nintendo once and for all. If you would rather play something that’s a little more fun, check out Wii Sports!

Overall 3/10