Our first experience with the original We Cheer didn’t go that well. My daughter had done cheerleading for a few years, and I thought she’d enjoy it on the Wii. I think she played once and that was it. She said it was too hard. I hesitated a bit on getting We Cheer 2, but I finally decided to give it another try. I’m glad we did.

Although I would say the game is still aimed at ’tween girls and moms that have cheerleading dreams, the game does finally include male characters. You start by choosing between eight default girls and eight default boys, but you unlock additional characters as you play through the game.

You can customize quite a bit in We Cheer 2. If you don’t like the default uniform options, you can change the style of the tops, bottoms, shoes and pompoms. You can pick a main color and two accent colors. If you get really ambitious, there’s even a tool to mix your own colors. You can also design a logo for your squad if you want to be totally unique. You can buy additional outfits and accessories in the Cheer Shop with the cheer points you earn as you play.

If you don’t like the looks of the default characters, no problem. Go into the Squad Lineup, and you can really go wild. For one thing, you can pick your team from all of the available characters you’ve unlocked. Beyond that, you can rename any of them, add accessories like face paint or even give them complete makeovers — change their hair, eyes, skin, mouth and/or eyebrows. They will all be universally skinny, of course, but with large heads and giant eyes that you’ll commonly see in Japanese animation. They’re terribly cute and mainly perky.

I like that the game comes with multiple save game slots. This means my daughter and I can have our own custom characters and level along at our own pace. The tutorial was done reasonably well. There was a lot of chatter, and the characters show o n e a t a t i m e but you can click the A and get the whole sentence to load at once. You can also choose to skip the tutorial entirely if you already know how to play. I appreciated that we could get started in the game without having to first read the manual.

We played entirely on the beginner level, but for those with more experience and coordination, you also can ramp up the difficulty with intermediate and advanced levels on each song. You will have to successfully complete the song at least once on beginner or intermediate to unlock advanced, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

Each song has its own specific routine. My daughter insisted on playing the same song over and over (Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne) but then complained that it had the same routine each time. I reminded her that in her real cheerleading they also did one specific routine to one specific music track. If she wants other routines, she’ll have to actually try other songs. The more songs/routines you successfully pass, the more songs you unlock. Eventually there are 30 song/routine combinations you’ll have available. I like that these are all by the main artists and not cheesy covers.

You have both squad and competition mode. Squad mode is the short storyline introducing you to the basic team and unlocking players and outfits. You are assigned the venue for each of these challenges, but you get to pick the song from whatever you’ve already unlocked. In competition mode, you pick both song and venue, and you do unlock additional venues as you move through the game.

You have an option to cheer using one or both hands. With one hand, you can pick right or left. If you have two Wii-motes, you can use both. In the competition mode, you can choose to go head to head with either two or four friends. If you’re doing the two-hand mode, you can only do the two friend battle since it only handles four remotes.

One thing that really helped me get started is that when you’re ready to start each competition, you have the option to view the routine before you actually have to do it. You can kind of practice the moves without the pressure of being scored, and you can review it as many times as you want. I think that’s a great feature.

There also is a workout mode available and a couple of party games, but we stuck with the main game. If you get into it, you’re going to get a workout just playing the game. You don’t need a specific workout mode. My shoulders are still feeling it today.

I have two caveats I think I should mention. It could be just us, but we could not find out how to put on the special outfits we bought in the cheer shop. The accessories were available, but we couldn’t find the outfits. We didn’t see them in the team customization area or in the uniform customization area. I’m baffled; I admit it.

As for the song lyrics, while some (very few) “bad” words are muted out, there’s going to be a lot of swear words still in there. If this is an issue for you, you need to be aware of it.

I’m not the cheerleader type. I’m the geek type. I’m definitely not coordinated and had no aspirations to be a school cheerleader. Even so, I still had fun playing We Cheer 2. My daughter also had a blast (she’s 9). If you want a fun cheerleading game, skip the original We Cheer and go straight to We Cheer 2. It’s fun and it’s doable for even the athletically challenged. Go team!