All Star Cheer Squad
Ages: Everyone

This is like boot camp for Cheerleaders. You come into the team as a replacement for someone who was injured and are greeted with some skepticism as to your skill, and with a resistance to accept you. Therefore, as a newbie you must prove yourself to the team, and so begins the training, which starts at tryout mode and advances to where you probably can actually acquire enough skill to tryout for a team. They claim over three hundred different cheer moves. To encourage you meanwhile, there are options to customize your avatar - gender, skin tone, facial features, eye color, hair style, makeup and oufits.

The Wii version makes a great deal of sense, because you are actually moving through the exercises. At the beginning you look like you're sending semaphore signals. Moves are made with the nunchuk in one hand and the remote in the other. Red signals represent the nunchuk and blue the remote. Arrows pass through a target point at which time you respond. You will be doing more than the T's and Y's, such as crossing moves and moving arms independently. Practice exercises are done with the instructor facing away from you which makes it difficult to see what the moves are. What were they thinking?. Eventually you will become good enough to move out of practice and into competitions where you compete against three other cheer squads or into challenges where you compete head to head against other cheerleaders. Multiplayer allows 2-4 players.

And that's not all - you can work with the Wii balance board and use you hands and feet. We have a balance board in the office, however I wasn't tempted to try the above. There's lots more. You can create you own routine by dragging moves into a time line. And, challenges can get really competitive. Did you know that cheerleaders can attack and defend? And here I thought it was only about pompoms.

Fun Factor: Wanna' try it - check out the cover first
Female Factor: Cheeleaders can be either male or female
Player Friendly: Comprehensive manual but game would benefit from more on-screen instruction

Reviewed by: Editor - 11/08