Buzz: Quiz TV – Reviewed – PS3

Sometimes, games are designed to be reviewed, especially games that almost review themselves. This one was particularly easy, since the reviewing process goes a little like this. Firstly, take game home. Then plug in Buzz controllers, call wife, and beat her a$$ a few times. I love it!! Then do the following. Invite 3 more couples around, serve copious amounts of booze, some local SA chicken on the Weber, and get the boys to play each other, then the girls, then make the winners of each round play each other and get an overall winner, get the losers to play each other, and then pit the overall winner of the winners to play against the overall winner of the losers. Make sense?? Good.

Buzz is an interactive Quiz Game, similar to a Trivial Pursuit kind of idea, but with quite a funny host, some seriously cool different round mechanics, and a sense of absolute power when beating everyone else.

I would normally hit the story mode here, but hell, there isn’t one at all, and forget playing a single player campaign, as it’s about as fun as playing Tennis against a wall. You will feel no satisfaction playing this game alone. Period.

Basically, this is how the gameplay goes. Firstly, each player or team gets a Buzz controller, and if you have never seen one before, it’s a plastic handheld device with a big red button on the top, and four coloured buttons running down the front for making answer selections. Each player or team selects a character, each with their own individual behaviour, responding very differently to getting answer wrong or right. You can then choose an outfit for each of the characters, and finally a sound for the buzzer whenever it is pushed, ranging from baby giggles to burps. Then the game show begins. The players are taken through various rounds of questions with different mechanics, from fastest finger to Pie Fight, eventually ending up in the final countdown, where each players score is translated into time, which raises a platform to a specific height and slowly descends as questions are asked, resulting in the final winner hitting the ground last. It’s very entertaining, and provided most of the specific evening’s entertainment. It also has an online mode, so you can join players all over the world, and you can even add your own questions to the game. Plus, don’t think that these questions are overly easy, as that is far from the truth.

From a graphics point of view, don’t expect any Call of Duty 4 here, but it’s presented in a very capable way nonetheless, and it has some pretty cool animated characters within the game.

The sound is also a decent effort, with the voice acting quite good, and the music playing a specifically good role with the whole quiz show feel. The music at some point can get a bit irritating, but is doesn’t get too bad at all.

From an overall perspective, it seems that Sony is pushing the casual gaming limits with the range of games they are releasing, including the likes of this and Singstar, but this version is particularly fun, providing hours of entertainment. After playing about 10 different games of this, I have yet to see a repeat question, and some of the rounds are particularly tense.  The fact that you can add your own questions, and use other people’s online gives this game a seriously long life, and I’m sure they’ll be some official downloads as well. Just a note here, the PS2 Buzz controllers do work with the PS3 version, so if you’ve already invested in the PS2 version, and upgraded to PS3, you are in luck. IMHO, this game is actually worth the cash if you are into Local Multiplayer Party Games.

Scoring:
Gameplay: 9/10 [Load’s of Fun]
Presentation: 8/10 [Well Presented, cool characters]
Sound: 8/10 [A decent effort]
Value: 9/10 [Should provide hours of entertainment]
Overall: 8.5/10 [I’d pay for it!!]

Last Updated: July 1, 2008