Nintendo Okie

• Howdy:  * Motions are top notch.
• * Soundtrack is really good
• * Tons of unlockables and customization.
• See Ya’:  No Motion Plus
• Not enough songs.
• I’m a cheerleader.

Let me just say this up front.  When I first put this game, We Cheer 2, in my Wii I was not expecting much.  I’m a near 30 year old man standing in front of my TV waving digital pom poms.  If that’s not a recipe for message board fodder, I don’t know what is.  Let me also say this.  Don’t judge a game by its title.  We Cheer 2 is a lot of fun.

The premise of the game is simple.  You follow on screen prompts with either one or two Wii Remotes acting as your pom poms.  The better you perform those actions the more points you get.  You’ll do a wide variety of motions from throwing your hands up or to the side, to making big wide circular motions and a lot of interesting stuff in between.  There are two single player modes that you can pick from.  The first is just a simple competition where you pick one of the game’s 30 licensed tracks and try to get as high a score as you can.  The second is the games “story” mode.  You’ve joined a cheerleading squad that is trying to win the championship.  During the game’s brief story your captain goes down and you’re the only one that knows the moves and you have to lead the squad to victory. 

The movement is controlled with either one remote in your hand or two.  Namco Bandai made the right move in getting rid of the Nunchuk.  Anyone that has tried to use it in rhythm games knows that the motion sensing of the Nunchuk just isn’t good enough to handle fast paced games like this.  The addition of the second Wii Remote gives you the same weight in both hands and a better sensitivity to help nail the routine.  The problem is that even the Wii Remote doesn’t recognize every gesture you do and now that Motion Plus is out it seems like a very curious omission.  The gestures themselves vary quite nicely and mean the routines never really get old.  You’re graded on each move you do with some form of feedback.  If the move was labeled as “Cool” you performed it perfectly.  You’ll also see indicators telling you if you were too fast or too slow.  It really lets you know how you’re doing and you’re able to adjust during the song to help increase your score.  Each song has some motion that will make it stand out from the others and there are a very large variety of motions that you’ll do.  Each song will have one or more points where you’ll be asked to hit motions for bonus points and every motion you do perform will add a letter to some message at the bottom of the screen.  When you’ve finished that section you’ll go into bonus mode where you shake the Wii Remotes as fast as you can to score a ton of bonus points.  The more letters you have of the phrase, the longer your bonus time lasts.  When you have friends over that want to play you can go into Multi-player mode and cheer together to see who has the best moves.  The game supports up to four players each using one Wii Remote.

The soundtrack is what you’d expect if you were going to a high school cheerleading competition.  It has the classics like Tubthumping or Get Ready For This.  It also has a lot of newer stuff from many artists you’d see on the Disney Channel like Miley Cyrus, Ashley Tisdale and Demi Lavato.  Overall the soundtrack fits perfectly with the game, and while it could have more songs the ones it does have are very nice to cheer to.

Each of the modes will award you with Cheer Points.  These increase your experience after every competition and you go up in rank when you’ve reached a certain number of points.  You start out as a trainee and the goal is to make it to captain.  This serves to let you know just how well you’re doing and how long you’ve been playing.  Cheer Points are used to purchase many of the game’s different unlockables, most of which come in the form of new outfits that you can use to customize your cheerleader.  Everything is customizable from the pattern on the clothes, to the style of clothing you’re wearing.  You can also customize the colors and the name of your squad so you can fulfill your dream of cheering for you dear old high school.  My squad was decked out in uniforms that were near perfect matches for my old high school in Pampa, TX.  You can play as either a boy or a girl and there are 200 different things that can be unlocked.  As you perform better you’ll also open up new venues and new members will join the squad.  You can customize the roster to your liking, but this seems to mainly be for looks as the cheerleaders seem to be all identical to each other. 

The game is definitely one of those don’t judge a book by its cover moments.  I went into the game not expecting much or to have fun and was completely surprised when I found myself playing more and more.  The motions are all fresh and the game will give you a workout.  I was sweating by the end of just a handful of songs.  It fits the target audience of tween girls perfectly and I have no doubt that any young girls out there would love the game.  The soundtrack is exactly what they would have on their iPod.  It’s easy to dismiss a game like this, but you’d be wrong.  Aside from the curious lack of Motion Plus support and a soundtrack that I would have liked to see expanded the game is fun and if you have daughters that like these rhythm games you’d have fun playing along with them.

Final Score: 3/5 Average

Review copy of the game provided by Namco Bandai.