Anyone who's ever played a console game with a lot of inventory management is familiar with the pain of rearranging items given only a directional pad or analog stick (used in functionally equivalent manners, of course) and a set of buttons. They may not be willing to admit the pain, of course; the games just might give them emotional impetus to mask it — but that doesn't mean it's at all the right way to deal with this task.
With Wii, grabbing becomes absolutely painless. You aim at the object you want to move, hold the B trigger, thus grasping with your forefinger, aim where you want to drop the object, and release. Simple as that. No repeated taps of a direction or repeat delay followed by a backtrack because you missed your target; if you can pick up your beer from the table next to you and get it to your mouth, you've already got this down.
Absolutely not a problem. Point, squeeze, point, release. In inventory-heavy games like RPGs, grabbing can be combined with pointing to provide scrolling or tabs to sort large quantities of items you want to move around.
In fact, grabbing can be used in the adventure or RPG genre to eliminate the old and complex equipment and item use menus. A picture of the character you're working with is displayed on the screen; simply grab the equipment you want to put on him or item to use on him from an appropriately filtered list and drop it right on top of him.
Fans of Nintendo DS puzzle game Meteos saw some potential in Wii's unique control setup: it would be the only console that could concievably play the game. (For the uninitiated, Meteos is played by sliding pieces up and down in columns to complete rows of three or more, launching groups of pieces up and off the playfield. The pacing of the game takes full advantage of the DS stylus and would be unthinkable to play with a directional pad and buttons.)
With Wii, we can create unique puzzle games that use grabbing to put the whole playfield under consideration. Instead of just sliding pieces up and down, we can now grab pieces and drop them in other places on the playfield, swapping them with the one currently occupying that space and completing patterns. It's a potentially addictive recipe for a brand-new subgenre of puzzle games.
If fast-paced puzzle action isn't your forté, maybe classic picture puzzles are?
Scattered on your screen are a hundred pieces of a picture of your choosing, many not even oriented correctly. Pick them up, reorient them with taps of the directional pad, and drop them in place. Fit pieces together simply by dropping one into place alongside its mate. Pick up and move around larger clumps of attached pieces to get them out of the way. Aww... look at the cute kitty.
In the new Goldeneye, players no longer have to use inanimate objects to offer protection. You can use the enemy as a human shield to help ward off additional harm to yourself.
As you make your way quietly through the hallway, you peek around the corner to see if anyone is approaching. Oh no! A group of men are coming. As the first person rounds the corner, you quickly press the trigger button to grab him by the shoulder and swipe your controller through the air as if to wrap your hand around your foe's neck. You now have him in your arms, offering yourself protection from the rest of the angry group of men. After all, they don't dare take the chance of shooting their own man.