This game is really fun and I'm so mad that We Cheer 2 didn't release here.(PLEASE SOMEONE SEND ME 2 AND A US WII). Anyway, We Cheer is a very enjoyable rhythm/dancing game with a really great song list. It seems to kinda be a TECHNICALLY part of the "We" series by Bandai Namco, although that series has such inconsistent naming and is barely tied together (Family/We Ski, Go Vacation, We Cheer and Family Fishing/Fishing Resort).
We Cheer is a game with a large variety of songs with full choreographed cheerleading routines attached to them. Each routine has movements to do to supposedly copy the moves of the cheerleaders, although in the game's Normal difficulty there's a lot missed out and obviously their more complex moves are just turned into a movement of the Wiimotes. It's a bit hard to get the hang of, with it taking a bit of time to fully get the right strength and speed the game wants from your movements. Also, some directional stuff is a bit weird and requires the Wiimote to be pointed around a bit more than the game suggests (before each song, it suggests you hold both Wiimotes up throughout, but for some sideways movements it's a bit easier to turn the Wiimote to the side). There's a bit of difficulty there and it can get a bit annoying, but once you're used to it, the gameplay becomes fun. It's still sometimes a bit hard to hit some things the right way but that's more of me being imperfect and unskilled at that point than technique problems. Once you've got timing, strength and direction down, it becomes a very fun experience with a variety of amazing songs. It's not like, perfection and, as I said, the motion takes some getting used to, but it's good. There's also a 1 Wiimote each multiplayer which has a little character select and makes the movement instructions very small and individual for each player. It's kinda weird but it works I guess? There's also a workout mode with some basic workout instructions done in the same format as the dance mode, which works fine enough. The whole premise of the workout mode is that you're training people to lose weight and you have this client to help who will gradually become less fat as you excercise which is a bit weird and also seems to barely work, it'll just make the character become less fat faster near the end if you haven't done enough to remove it, as far as I could tell from what I played, but I don't know because I am frankly too tired out to try that again.
There's a lot of characters to be recruited for your cheer team by competing in each stadium and you can change their hair and skin colours, although the skin colours part is a bit weird considering you can lighten character's skin tones and the game treats these characters as if they were actual characters and not just customisation options, but I kinda get what they were going for, basically just to allow you to make a character that's hopefully like you without an in-depth editor. There's also a lot of customisation for your cheer team outfit, which is fun. There's a variety of clothing and colour options and some cool team logo editing stuff.
Visually, the game actually looks amazing. The graphics are surprisingly good and are very vibrant and stylised. It has some really REALLY great UI, with the bright colours and the ribbon menus, the rainbow cheer symbol to show your score and the flowery combo icon all being wonderfully designed with really beautiful colours.
Musically, there's a 36 song collection with a really good variety and a collection of some of the most consistently good tracks in a licensed rhythm game of this kind I've ever seen. I literally discovered some songs I absolutely LOVE from this game, plus some remixes and covers of popular songs (not original to the game) that sound better than their originals (to me, of course)!!! This game has some really nice menu music too, which is kinda expected for Namco. It has a few tracks for talking, winning, losing and menus and honestly they're fairly good. Sadly, I can't find any online. The talking in the workout menu is absolutely the best one in my opinion.
The PAL box art is really nice, I think. It has a nice light-blue gradient into white and a darker shade of blue with a disco ball in the background, which honesuly has a really nice aesthetic to it. Front and centre on the box art is a really nice render of one of the girls from the game, bringing out the style of the game in a much higher quality than the game could achieve. This is just making me think about how badly I want a HD Bandai Namco game with this style. There's also two other cheer girls jumping from the sides of the girl in front, which leads to a pleasing layout. My issue with the PAL box art is the logo. It uses a completely different logo in a generic font with just the stars from the actual logo remaining. I say "actual logo" because this isn't even a proper logo change, the logo stays as the American version in-game!!! It's extremely odd and a design choice I really don't like, as it ruins an otherwise very nice box.
The NA box art is very good too. I enjoy the layout of this one too and once again it has those really stunning renders of the cheerleaders. The darker background and the lights around the cheerleaders really make them stand out a bit more, but also loses some of the pleasantness of that gradient background from the PAL version. Of course, this version uses the correct logo which should NOT in most cases be a positive but here we are.
The JP box art has a different logo which is... decent enough. There's no good lighting or very high quality models, it's just slightly better than Wii level models in some big formation. Admittedly, maybe this is to show the large cast of characters, but I think that just clogs up the screen with an unnecessary amount of characters and makes the art look overall worse.
Sadly, I am not yet reviewing 2's box art. But if I was, there would be lots of praise to its JP version.
Game: 7/10
Music: 7/10
Box (PAL): 8/10
Box (US): 8/10
Box (JP): 4/10
Very fun game that introduced me to some good music and had amazing UI design. I'd say it's a bit of a lower 7 than Madagascar Kartz, but these rankings really aren't the be all and end all of this review thing, so I'd rather not act like they have extreme nuance. Number rankings are hard, especially when I limit myself to not using 0.5 increments. Namco, it's been like 15 years but I still want We Cheer 2 in Europe pretty pleaseeeeee.
(EDIT: Music score changed from 8 to 7)
