Hands On: We Cheer 2

It's no secret that Namco Bandai's We Cheer is a guilty pleasure around the castle. So it was with great enthusiasm that I happily took the Wiimotes from Alicia to give We Cheer 2 a shot. With 30 new songs to choose from, I eventually landed on Salt 'n Pepa's "Push It." I was a little concerned that it was a five star song, even if we were on Easy difficulty, but I was also assured that the controls had been tweaked from the original game to be much more forgiving. And I can happily report back to you that this is indeed the case. I had absolutely no problem clearing the song, even though it was one of the harder tunes!

There are actually three difficulty levels, which I also appreciate. Because in the original, there were only two, and since the beginner level proved to be such a challenge, the advanced one was next to impossible... at least for me! Now I should be able to easily finish the easy mode, and possibly intermediate, giving me a little more of a challenge before I hit the brick wall of advanced!

Obviously, the big news this time around is the inclusion of male cheerleaders, something the original We Cheer sadly lacked. (I've included a gallery of screens of the boys below) Not that I didn't enjoy dressing up my virtual cheerleader, but I would've preferred some boys. Some of the guys are the beefy type, so they look a little weird, but no matter what they look like to start, you'll be able to avail yourself of the massive customization features to tweak everything about them down to skin tone and facial features. Hopefully they'll have enough options that I can eventually make him look like myself, something I always enjoy doing in games.

Training Mode and Exercise Mode both make a return appearance, but the meat of the game will be Championship Mode, as you work your way up from a freshman cheerleader wannabe all the way to the top of the pyramid as a varsity champion! And you can play against up to three of your friends to see who's got the best moves in four-player multiplayer! I had such a great time playing We Cheer 2 that I almost didn't want to see any other games that they had to show me! And I'm only mildly embarrassed to confess that I'm actually really looking forward to this game's release on the Nintendo Wii on November 3!