 Review By: Siou Choy |
Developer: | Namco Bandai |
| Publisher: | Namco Bandai | |
| Genre: | Sports | |
| ESRB: | Everyone 10+ | |
| # Of Players: | 1-4 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | N/A |
Personal anecdote to kick things off. The first time I saw the original We Cheer was via an impromptu demonstration one night at a local video game chain. A tough looking, scruffy tattooed punk was dancing around, remotes in hand, swinging his arms, kicking his legs, and doing turns in full cheerleader mode – and here’s the kicker - with absolutely no shame or fear of embarrassment. Not only were a lot of laughs shared by all of the small crowd present, but the game actually seemed to be a lot of fun thereby. After all, if a guy like that could have a good ol’ time acting like a fool playing it, then who was I to protest?
Well, it’s a year later and We Cheer 2 is set to turn more tough guys and tomboys into preening cheerleaders. What’s a bit creepy this time around is that you can play as a male cheerleader (yes, there are several males to choose from) as well as the expected female version, leading a squad through 30 songs worth of cheers at 3 levels of difficulty each. There are lots of little additions and tweaks that should make it a worthwhile purchase for fans of the original…at least if we keep this discussion purely on the aesthetic level.
Problem 1: the songs. The first We Cheer had a lot of passable songs spanning the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s to today – while few real gems were in there, nothing really made me or my fellow gamers cringe or turn away. Unfortunately, that is decidedly not the case this time around. Filled with the sort of Disney crap that only a “tween” girl could love, there is in fact very little on We Cheer 2 that isn’t Disney/Nickelodeon branded – one really bad 80’s track (the egregious Run DMC/Aerosmith stinker “Walk This Way”, anyone?), a handful of annoying early 90’s “guido” dance tracks (Salt N Pepa’s “Push it”? 2 Unlimited?), and a few nasty yuppie “favorites” of more recent vintage (Smash Mouth? The Chili Peppers?), topped off by 2 perfectly hideous covers – one mangling of Iggy Pop by some bozos named “Everlast”, and a hilarious unintentional trashing of Michael Jackson and Eddie Van Halen’s “Beat It” by Ashlee Simpson’s wife…I mean husband and one of those ubiquitous losers (one “John Mayer”, if that means anything to anyone out there) who sing out of the corner of their mouths or grunt constipatedly in place of actual talent. Seriously, you have to hear this one to believe it – the string mangling “solo” actually stopped me in my mid-cheer tracks, racked with sheer derisive laughter.
As for the rest (and we’re still talking about 23 songs here, folks)…hey, no offense, but anyone above the age of 12 who could admit to listening to these abominable “songs” by briefly popular, yet already washed up Disney “idols” like the entire cast of High School Musical and the girl from Camp Rock is quite likely tone deaf, and clearly utterly lacking in any semblance of taste. Worse, few if any of these songs actually work as cheerable songs – we’re not exactly talking “Footloose” here, folks.
Posted: 2011-01-31 18:21:12 PST