Plot:

Whittier arrive in college and her only dream is cheering there. She joins Monica, a friend she made a cheer camp attending the same college. They both managed to make the team. But after a while they can’t put up with tyrannic captain of the Varsity squad and decide to create they own Renegade squad. They recruit students whose clubs have been cut funding. Both squad perform in front of the student body to choose which one will represent the college in the national competition.

My personal opinion:

This one is my second least favorite BIO. The plot isn’t very interesting of full of surprises. They actors are OK. But the cheerleading skills are kind of cool. However it is totally unrealistic, the new squad made of total newcomers to the sport manage to over night get better than the very talented Varsity squad and win the championship.

Plot:

After losing several years in a row to the East Coast Jets, Carson, captain of the West Coast Sharks decides that this year they will win the competition at Camp Spirit Thunder. During camps, both teams regularly challenge each other in cheer offs, one of them lead both teams to a cheer “fight” in the middle of Universal Studios at night. The result is the injury of several members from each teams and their expelling from the camp. But both captains decide to put aside their grudge and work together to put together a new squad with the remain of both squads to try and win the competition.

My personal opinion:

It’s a West Side Story like scenario. There’s a love affair between a girl form the Sharks and a boy from the Jets. We also see the return of the spirit stick and its supposed bad luck if you misplace it. It is said that this spirit stick was given by Herkie himself. There is a lot of drama but also a good ending with two enemies having to work together to win instead to against each other. My second favorite BIO. They actors are good and the shooting location is awesome, Universal Studios.

Apart from the great teenage movie this is, it’s also a very good cheerleading movie. The stunts an tumbling are great, like a good BIO. Real cheerleading is depicted here. Everything to please a cheerleader.

Official website

Score
Fun: 1/5
Graphics: 4/5
Gameplay: 1/5
Cheerleading accuracy: 1/5

Pro

- real baton handle pompons included
- played with eye toy camera
-very cool graphics and interface art

Cons

-awful video recognition
-unplayable interface
-very basic gameplay

Review

This game is about waving pompons to make shapes or hit target on the screen and the camera is supposed to watch your moves to control the game. Except is it almost impossible to have a good recognition. Apparently in the game it work kind of OK but in the interface it so badly done that you need about 10 minutes of frustration and waving before being able to even launch the game. The problem is that the game will confuse your pink and green items and and think it’s the poms, plus you have to pass over interface items to validate thus you select something else doing that.

Regarding game play it is very similar to We Cheer. And it might be fun if you like doing that and play with friends.

Regarding cheerleading, the only link is pompons and moving. The moves are not even real motions and the characters would hit a very basic stunt at the end of the routine. Of course you don’t get to play the stunt and they are even wrong.

Tips

-Remove all the pink and green things in the background of the camera or you won’t be able to play at all because the camera will confuse the pink or green items as your pompons.

-Don’t buy this game. It might be fun for very young girl, but the camera is making the navigation in the menu so frustrating, you end up getting mad in you living room before even being able to launch the game. For exactly the same kind of gameplay, We Cheer for the we is very recommended instead.

Plot:

Lina’s mother (Cuban American) remarried to a rich guy living in Malibu. She left her home squad (East LA) to her best friend when she moves. But most of the members quit when she left. Her new step-sister, Sky, is the captain of the Sealions, her High School squad. She’s the captain by default because no one else would do it. Avery was in the Sealions but quit when she wasn’t elected captain. She is now the captain of an All Star gym squad, the Jaguars. They’re really good compared to the Sealions. Lina makes the Sealions squad and got elected captain. She decide to bring her best friends over to help her make them better cheerleaders. The Jaguars don’t appreciate that there’s new good recruits in their nemesis squad. They take care that Lina’s friend get kicked out of the Malibu school. Meanwhile, half of the Sealions quit because of that. But Lina and her friends manage to convince a local gym to sponsor them to participate in the All Star championship. They mix the remaining of the Sealions with the remaining of the East LA to make a new squad.

My personal opinion:

BIO 5 keeps the tradition of the nightmare as the first scene. However, the scene is not as funny as the other movies. I’m generally quite disappointed with this installment. This one has become my least favorite of the 5. They’re talking about All-Star cheerleading during the whole movie but all you see is dance! This is not what All Star cheerleading is about. There is much less stunting than in all the other movies. Some basket tosses and a few pyramids. But nothing incredible and innovative like in the previous movies. I’m also quite shocked to see them cheer with huge earrings. That’s dangerous. The music good but the plot is ok and the cheerleading is really not well depicted. I hope the next one will be better.

Looks good but is dangerous, illegal and impossible! They're not men they can't catch and hold a girl alone. And what's with the poms?

Support: DS
Released Date: 2009
Developer: 1st Playable Productions
Publisher: Ubisoft
Genre: Rythm
Players: 1-2 players

Official website

Score
Fun: 2/5
Graphics: 2/5
Gameplay: 1/5
Cheerleading accuracy: 3/5

Pro

- Accurate cheerleading skills (stunts, pyramid, jumps and motions)
- Tons of stuff to unlock (music, outfits…)
- The story characters are well done and cool
- Multiplayer mode is co op
- In the main menu you see the girls stretching and warming up

Cons

- Unrealistic and dangerous executions of stunts and pyramids
- Too basic gameplay
- The game characters are not polished enough
- The interface is sometimes confusing

Review

The first contact you have with the game is the cover. Front: 70′s looking cheerleaders (outfit, poms and jump). It’s a photograph, nothing to do with the game. Back: Poor quality art from the game. Ok, I shouldn’t judge a game by it’s cover, but it’s not starting well. Considering it’s Ubisoft, I was expecting a better general quality. And my first impression stuck when playing. It’s a game that could have been good and had great ideas to put accurate cheerleading skills in, but the gameplay is too basic and boring. You just get to make your character perform motions, the jumps, stunts and pyramids are only to look good between play sequences. The graphics are not that polished too. The DS can really do better. They tried cell shading but on such a low polygons count on the characters and flickering when the scene moves, it doesn’t look good.

The story is about two girls who decide to start a squad because their team suck and there’s no audience to support them. So they thought that if there was a cheerleading squad, more people would come cheer for the team. After some levels, more people join the squad. The closeups of the characters in scenario sequences are cartoon-like, very colorful and fun, very well done.

There are several modes:

- Story: includes a story between each round. Each round is either a challenge (cheer off) or a tutorial for new stuff to manage in the game. Sometimes you aslo have a mini-game.
- Challenge: you can redo the challenges you’ve already made. You can choose music, venue and opponent and difficulty based on the things you have unlocked and paid for.
- Style: you can change the outfits and look of your squad with money you’ve earned.
- Mini-game: if you score well in those games you can earn extra money. There are 3 mini-games: jump rope (you only earn very small amounts unless you are very good), bake sale (earn $1 per cake sold) and mary mack.
- Multiplayer: this is co op. That’s nice. That means that both players are in the same squad and must work together for a combined score.

The customization of the character includes: choosing hair style, outfit color, school colors (very limited), outfit style, theme (graphics in the bottom screen), cheers (moves style). You can also see the trophies won. The music is dynamic and you can unlock more tunes, but it’s not cheerleading mix or famous songs.

Very (too) simple stylus game. Draw lines: up, down, left and right. Sometimes you also have to click on some shapes. It’s supposed to be a rhythm game but you can draw your lines practically any time, you don’t really have a special beat to match. The sequences are really simple. Usually there’s only 2 different moves and about 2-5 moves per sequence. On those 4 basic lines drawn, each squad puts different real cheerleading motions based on “up”, “down”, “left” and “right”. The game can become very repetitive and boring on the long run considering there are so few different things to do.

Between the motions sequence they had your squad perform some jumps and stunts. The jumps are real and hard cheerleading jumps. Plus they are correctly executed. That made me really happy. So far I’ve seen: Toe Touch, Around the world, Side Hurdler, Double Nine, Double Hook and Front Hurdler. I’m sure there are many more but it’s hard to catch them since you are concentrated on the bottom screen and they happen on the top screen. And each girl does a different jump.

Sometimes your squad does stunts and pyramids too. Three girls make an extension (no backspot and no frontspot), turn it into a liberty and the flyer doubles down. And still no back spot to catch her! I know it looks good on the game and it’s fun, but it teaches really bad practices. It’s dangerous and impossible. Almost all the stunts in the game have one girl holding one girl, very often on one feet. Only men can do that. Plus it’s really not safe to not have many people catching the flyers when she goes down. And again, the bases have poms in their hands when doing the stunts, come on! Apart from those problems, the stunts and pyramids are correct and well executed. I’ve seen liberties, liberty pyramids, 2-2-1, cradles, double downs…

The stunts and jumps are only there to look nice. You don’t get to play to make them. They are between the basic motions you do with the stylus. At least they tried to put pyramids and stunts and apart from the wrong number of girls doing it and the poor security they are pretty accurate. That was a nice try. Too bad you can’t play to make stunt, jumps and pyramids. It could have been fun and challenging for the developers.

Tips

- Don’t click on credits unless you want to wait 10 minutes doing nothing, the credits scroll and you can’t do anything.

- In the cheer off there’s a free style mode when you reach the x5 bonus. You can hit any move, that just gives you point. Try and do as many as possible during the short Freestyle period.

- In the cheer off you need to cheer inside the DS microphone sometimes. Of course you can say whatever you want, it still works.

- If you do good in cheer off you unlock new things and get money. The better the score, the more things you unlock and the more money you get to buy unlocked things. You can redo the levels to try and make a better score and unlock more stuff.

Elite Beat Divas

Support: DS
Released Date: 2007
Developer: iNiS
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Rythm
Players: 1-4 players

Official website

Score
Fun: 3/5
Graphics: 3/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Cheerleading accuracy: 0/5

Pro

- Nice 2D cartoon graphics
- Addicting game

Cons

- Cheerleaders appear only in the most difficult level
- Cheerleaders are just sexy dancers

Review

Elite Beat Agent is a rhythm game where you must click on targets. It’s a well done game that is quite addicting. Dancing “agents” come to the rescue of random people needing help. The cartoon depicting the problems of the characters are humorous and funny and designed as comics.

This is not really a cheerleading game. The most difficult level pictures three cheerleaders “Elite Beat Divas” as characters. It’s too bad they are only on the hardest level. It’s hardly playable. The other level has agents as Japanese men cheerleaders/dancers.

Top screen with girls very small and an example of mini-game on the bottom screen

Info

Support: DS
Released Date: 2008
Developer: Gorilla Systems Corp.
Publisher: THQ
Genre: Rythm/Adventure
Players: 1 player

Official website

Score
Fun: 2/5
Graphics: 2/5
Gameplay: 1/5
Cheerleading accuracy: 1/5

Pro

- Nice backgrounds and general graphics for DS
- Nice idea of organization of time in a wheel, you can put the free time where you want.

Cons

- Hard to walk around because the view is in diagonal but the controls allows you to walk strait only.
- Supposedly cheerleading music but really strange.
- Mini games are very repetitive and boring and has nothing to do with cheerleading.
- Progression and tasks are really confusing.

Review

I made this review in Elite mode with the All Star Cheerleader version (European, but I guess everything is the same).

This is a story based game with rhythm mini-games using the stylus. You are a newbie cheerleader st camp and must learn cheerleading and get respect from the other girls.

My first impression is that the game isn’t really polished. It’s hard to play, hard to move and the tasks are really confusing. The graphics are nice though.

Many things are confusing. In the task, other than the mini-games, often you don’t know what is expected of you. Dialog are really confusing too. Sometimes you don’t talk with the person you are facing to but somebody else near.

Hard to walk around because the view is in diagonal but the controls allows you to walk strait only. That means that to go straight to some place you need to do up, left, up, left… to be able to go diagonally. And that’s the case in almost all the maps. That’s annoying.

Most of the time, the hand holding the stylus hides some part of the game screen, preventing you to see the dots you are supposed to click on.

The top screen is too small to show the girl doing motions. Also, doing the mini game, you don’t have time and possibility to watch the top screen.

What is nice is the stuff for which you get points: respect, spirit and fitness. That’s original and pretty accurate.

You need to train: motion, strength and balance with mini-games. The games are hard to play and not fun. But again, I like that you need to train different things. But of course there is more to cheerleading. Stunting and tumbling are not even mentioned.

You need to organize your time between practice, competition and free time. The game use a wheel to represent what you will do each day and where you are inside the schedule.

Except for some background pictures and what the girl is actually doing in certain mini-games, you could have transposed this game for any sport. Seeing this game doesn’t seem that they had cheerleading consultants.

That’s sad that just because it’s cheerleading it should appeal to girls. I guess girls, and all players, deserve better games.

Tips

- Try to hold your stylus as vertical as possible when playing rhythm mini-games so you don’t hide some part of the screen with your hand.

- Use the map instead of walking, it’s quicker.

A stunt in the back. Look at the bases holding the flyer. Only two girls holding poms!

Info

Support:Wii
Released Date: 2008
Developer: 505 Games
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Genre: Rythme
Controlers: 2 wiimotes
Players: 1-4 players

Official website

Score
Fun: 4/5
Graphics: 4/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Cheerleading accuracy: 2/5

Pro
- Fun to play
- Entertaining music
- Energetic and fun routines with cool formations
- Colorful graphics, cute characters, polished interface
- Many options for outfits, lettering, character customization
- The characters move really realistically and smoothly
- BPM (beat per minutes) info for songs

Cons
- Very hard to beat a level, even the easiest
- Not very accurate motion recognition
- Moves not related to cheerleading but dance
- You just dance, don’t do stunts. You just need to stand an move one or two arms.
- No scenario. Only small chat at the beginning of each level.
- Character a bit too sexy to be taken as athlete

Review

We Cheer is a fun game where you play a new cheerleader and you need to lead your squad through a series of competitions. The graphics are great and the music really fun. The routines are well done and the characters cute. However this is mostly a dance game with girls holding poms. This has nothing to do with competitive cheerleading despite their try of putting stunts in the background. The stunts have really not a major role and is just for decoration.

The only scenario is that you are new to the squad. The game features totally irrelevant chat between you and one player from the other team before each play.

The game has several modes: Championship mode, practice mode, cheer off mode (to dance with your friends) and workout mode with aerobic moves and diet ratio with indications of calories burned.

I don’t know what kind of advisory they had for the game, but apparently there were not really connected to the cheerleading industry. Also the sponsors’ banners in the game are not related to cheerleading, there’s ads for We Cheer in cheerleading magazines. Although this game looks very Japanese, it’s been developed by a US based studio and released in the US first.

Something really shocked me. The girls are dancing with the poms in their hands and suddenly they go for a stunt. But the bases keep the poms in their hands! I really can’t understand how you are supposed to trow a basket toss or and hit an extension with poms in the hands of the bases! Plus only two girls are basing a liberty, no back spot or front spot. This is illegal, unsafe and totally unrealistic.

Other than that, it’s a fun game. My cheerleading squad love playing We Cheer at parties. And they are having a blast at customizing the outfit and girls to look like our team. There is some funky color hair. Each character has some colors only available to them.

Safety

- Be careful not to hit your friends. Be sure to have a huge living room if you want to play together at the same time.

- Some arm moves are challenging. You should warm up before playing to reduce pain and injury.

Tips

- To win a level, most of the time you must complete the bonus stage. If you don’t you usually don’t egt enough points to win the level.