GENRE
	Simulation
	DEVELOPER
	Gorilla Games
	PUBLISHER
	THQ
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1-2
	WI-FI ENHANCED
	No
	DS COMPATIBLE
	No
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After Namco Bandai's all-girl, anime-styled and licensed-music heavy We Cheer, THQ has a more realistic cheerleader experience for budding pom pom shakers. All Star Cheer Squad has a lot more realism with respect to the world of competitive cheerleading, but for all its efforts to deliver an authentic and deep cheer experience, the game falls short due to load times and less engaging gameplay.

visuals

Featuring realistically proportioned cheerleaders with completely unchanging, stiff-smile faces, All Star Cheer Squad's cheerleaders try to walk a line between wide-eyed cartoon characters and realistic humans. Overall there are many tweaks a girl or boy cheerleader can receive, from about five or more faces, head shapes, hairstyles, hair colors, and a set of cheer outfits that can also be recolored a number of shades. At the end of the day, though, most of the characters look the same from the distance they're often shown at.

There are many real world-designed cheer venues to perform at, from basic stadiums, indoor theatres and gyms to more exotic beaches at sunset and a vibrant theme park lit up at night in a rainbow of colors. Yet to properly show the scope of these venues-- and fill them with huge crowds of animated spectators-- Gorilla Games opted to go a route similar to what has been seen in the Resident Evil GameCube remake or, more comparatively, Dreamcast's Space Channel 5: the cheerleaders appear to be 3D polygonal characters on top of a looping movie. This is hardly noticeable since the camera frequently changes angles and the cheerleaders are always shown in the right perspective and size, but their surroundings are noticeably muddier and fuzzy, and the quality contrast is very evident on a high definition television, when the camera is zoomed far out and the cheerleaders are sharp, technicolor figures against a dull, blurry stage. This distraction is infrequent since most of the game requires focusing on a bar of movement icons, but the difference is always stark and noticeable whenever the gamer's free to focus elsewhere.

Yet probably what's most intriguing about a cheerleading game is its choreography. The game's producers went all out and brought in the same renowned cheerleader choreographer who choreographed the movie Bring It On's sequences, but most of what there is to see, especially in the early half of the game, is glorified vogueing: hand pose after hand pose after hand pose. This isn't necessarily a knock to Tony G's choreography: cheerleading's fundamentals are indeed based around poses and holds, but this seems more a limitation of the gameplay design. When a gamer's working with a remote and nunchuk tethered together by a three-foot cord, there isn't a lot of dynamic popping and posing that can be done.

The game mixes up routines when hand poses are strung together in combos that cause the squad to engage in a brief bit of dance, but afterwords it's back to the pose-hold-pose format. Also, since every member of the squad usually does the exact same moves at the same time, there's no vibrancy of groups splitting off into separate movements or visually interesting interaction or mixing. Last, and perhaps least fortunate, the motion capture is often either robotic or too unified and misses the potential of an actual group of people trying to do the same moves: instead this is a single person (or two) that has been motion captured and cut and pasted on to the mat, a significant difference to We Cheer's dancier, less authentic but more complex and interesting choreography.

The last visual element worth mentioning is the cut-scenes, if only because they prolifically show up during the game's career mode, before and after each competition and sometimes as stand-alone skits. While decently written and voice acted, no choreography, motion capture or direction was put into them. Instead, characters are placed like robotic dolls in a gym, where they endlessly engage in warm-up stretches and twists while having lengthy conversations. Their facial expressions never change, their mouths don't move from those eerie, fixed smiles, and sometimes they'll have one-on-one, secret conversations about other cheerleaders who are clearly standing feet away and should be able to hear everything being said but don't react. This is likely a handicap caused by relying upon movie-style backgrounds that can't be altered, but it's distracting, especially since there are so many such scenes in the game.

audio

Right from the title screen, All Star Cheer Squad shouts out an authentic cheerleader soundtrack. Somehow the Jonas Brothers stumbled into the mix with their song "SOS," but the rest of the over 30 songs are unrecognizable and much more what would be expected in a real cheer event. Each music track is a typical song-byte mash-up, heavily laden with whip cracks, group claps and bleacher stomps. Squeaky voiced girls coo, cheer and shout; male vocalists rap and rattle off hip hop rhymes; and there's even some Spanish to be heard. Yet the nature of what a cheer routine demands means any segment of a song, brilliant or no, is likely to flip a U-turn into a totally different style or vibe nearly every 15 seconds. Regardless, it's very peppy and perfectly suited to the game's niche.

Gorilla Games also did a good job pulling in voice actors to speak as competition announcers and the cheerleaders-- even Rihanna and Drew Barrymore make an appearance as themselves. The voice acting is solid and would be just as appropriate in a cheerleader movie or television show.

gameplay

The foundation of the game's single- and multi-player gameplay requires a tethered remote and nunchuk instead of the one or two remotes We Cheer uses. This difference is notable because the untethered We Cheer allows for much fuller and larger movements while the constrained, corded experience of All Star Cheer Squad results in a much milder, sit-down experience.

Gamers with balance boards are encouraged to get on their feet, though-- in addition to the hand gestures, gamers can optionally step on and off a balance board (and of course balance), making routines more complicated and engaging. However, tiresome informational screens about the board that show up before every routine discourages extended use of the board.

Mentioning the game's loading at this point is as good a time as any to bring up All Star Cheer Squad's biggest downfall: incredibly long load times. Every experience in the single player mode-- displaying scores, dramatic cut scenes, pep talks before or after a competition, and of course each song in a competition-- can have anywhere from a 7 to almost 30 second load time. Considering the aforementioned score screens or pep talks often don't stay on screen as long as these load times, any energy or momentum the game has from moment to moment is endlessly halted. What's more, these loads aren't just time consuming, they can make a Wii sound like a garbage disposal with as much grinding and yanking back and forth the disc goes through to queue up the game's backgrounds, vocal tracks, animations and music. If ever a gamer were to get worried about a game's loading process wearing out her Wii, this would be the game to stoke that fear.

A truly exciting gameplay mechanic could make the endless hurry-up-and-wait load process tolerable, but All Star doesn't have that. While it's imminently more forgiving and accessible than We Cheer's more rigid expectations, it's not quite as fun. A series of pose holds will scroll from right to left across the bottom of a screen, and when a specific hold crosses a target zone at the left end of the line, the remote and nunchuk must be snapped into said pose. The closer the pose is implemented on beat, the more points are granted, and stringing poses together without error causes a combo point multiplier.

The poses are a vast array of holding the remote and nunchuk in v-shapes and l-shapes: inverted, upside down, one end or the other pointing out. There are also gestures involving pointing the devices at each other, or in the same direction in every compass direction. Things get even more complicated when button presses are required with certain poses-- nearly every accessible button (A, B, C and Z) is used alongside poses, and that's in addition to lasso swinging power-ups and pointing and tilting the remote to maintain a cheerleader's balance while she, for instance, stands on one foot while holding the other in the air. Thanks to three difficulty levels and the surprisingly broad spectrum of possible poses the remote and nunchuk can be put into, All Star provides a solid challenge if desired, especially when the moves start coming faster and faster in higher level events.

Yet this just doesn't reflect the dynamic, gymnastic and explosive energy that cheerleading connotes. This is instead a much more focused game about reading pose symbols and reacting swiftly to create them. Gamers can't get too frenetic or energetic, either, as the warning screen at the game's start advises: don't yank the tethered remote and nunchuk too hard. The experience is tauntingly restricted considering how much movement and energy is being shown by the cheerleaders on screen.

Regardless, there is plenty of content and competitions to get through, with or without big load times. Between practice sessions for every possible move and multi-event competitions in the single player mode, graduating from the bottom rung in the cheer squad to national cheer champion is a long road. Plus, the single player experience is nicely enhanced by the storyline that moves everything along, and it's different depending on whether playing as a male or female cheerleader. Great cheerleader vocab is taught-- favorites include "high def" as a compliment and "bragadocious" as a critique-- real national cheer events and media are story elements, and, best of all, inter- and intra-squad "drama bombs" are frequently dropped. And these girls are no angels, either. In one memorable sequence, a fellow girl cheerleader is endlessly supportive and trying to encourage the main girl character to enjoy cheerleading and not let a mother's expectations shadow or ruin that. Once confident after a couple events, the main character tells her friend that she's not over the hump but can see the top of it. Then, she promptly challenges this friend for her ranked position on the squad and takes it: looks like that friend was the "hump" to get over on the nasty climb to the top. Amusingly, the defeated and apparently insecure friend remains affectionate and complimentary afterwords.

Aside from being able to choreograph your own routine-- an experience that sounds better than it is executed-- the last thoughtful and unique detail All Star Cheer Squad provides is its ingenious use of Wii's messaging system. Accomplishing certain feats in the game will cause an extras-unlocking secret code to be sent the Wii's message board. After getting the special button combo from the message, it can be tapped into an extras screen and provide a new outfit or costume. Also very cool is that fellow cheerleaders will send messages of congratulations-- in character-- to the gamer's Wii message board as well.

multiplayer

The good thing about All Star Cheer Squad's focused gameplay is that there's not a steep learning curve for two gamers to competitively or cooperatively engage in a cheer event. The competitive mode is doubly exciting because, provided enough perfectly timed poses, gamers can attack one another with a "call out." When activated, a snarky taunt will shout from the remote's speaker and the other cheerleader's point accumulation will be handicapped until the call-out wears off or is canceled by another call-out by the original victim.

overall

Much like Bring It On, All Star Cheer Squad provides a compelling look into a sport that's often stereotyped and belittled. While providing the dramatic hijinks expected of a good teen soap, gamers can also learn a little about cheerleader culture-- such as overbearing parents, demanding friends and the insecurities of male cheerleaders-- as well as learn the basics of cheerleading, from events and media to the foundation moves that every cheerleader must start with. Unfortunately, the experience as a whole, deep as it may be, is as tethered as the remote and nunchuk. If it's not the gameplay being constrained to tight, yanking poses, it's the incessant and entirely too long loading screens. Dedicated, hardcore cheerleader fans or wannabes will likely have the drive to go through every event, becoming something of posing (or vogueing) masters, but there's not enough here to bring the masses in.

6.0/10