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The lovable host Buzz makes his PS3 debut with Buzz! Quiz TV.
Buzz! Quiz TV includes three modes: a solo mode, local multiplayer (for up to eight players) and an online mode. The solo mode has you competing for the highest score in the shortest amount of time. The online mode is new for the PS3 version of the game although only one person per PS3 can connect online – it would have been cool to allow multiple people per console to connect online. Where the game shines though is the local multiplayer mode.
Buzz! Quiz TV isn’t a dramatically different game than last year’s Buzz! titles for the PlayStation 2. Jason Donovan reprises his role as Buzz, the trivia show host known for his wacky jokes and silly one-liners. The game includes around 5,000 questions in five channels: Music, Movies & TV, Knowledge, Sports and Lifestyle. One of the biggest additions to Buzz! Quiz TV is the ability to download custom mini-sets (up to 8 questions) from other players online. Within a few days, questions from everything from Heroes to the Simpsons were found online. Those questions are found in their own MyBuzz channel. You can add your own questions at MyBuzzQuiz.com, allowing you to publish to anyone, just you or your friends.
In terms of structure, the people with the lowest score will choose the topic for the next round, which allows people to catch up. Further, the game keeps track of what questions have been asked, making it harder for people to gain an unfair advantage by playing the game more often. The questions are asked in various formats including Pie Fight (whoever gets the question right can pie another player; the last one remaining wins the most points), Fastest Finger (more points are awarded to the players who answer correctly the fastest), Pass the Bomb (a bomb is waiting to explode on you), etc. You can’t choose to only play in one of these formats, though.
A major change is the introduction of wireless buzzers. This addresses one of my personal criticisms of the first game—the mess of wires that resulted from four or eight player matches. The wireless buzzers work on both the PS2 and PS3, though the wired buzzers do also work with Buzz! Quiz TV. One annoyance with the new wireless buzzers is that they require two AA batteries each but given how little the buttons are doing I’m guessing that the battery life will be stellar.
Visually, the game is a dramatic improvement from the PS2 games – the character models in particular look great, almost like a CG movie. Overall though, the game isn’t trying to impress you with its graphics and what’s there looks good. Similarly, the game’s background music and voice acting are all silly but sound great.
Overall, Buzz! Quiz TV is a terrific PlayStation 3 debut for the franchise. The downloadable question packs (both paid and community-made), wireless buzzers and online multiplayer, as well as the improved presentation make the game one of the PS3’s best multiplayer offerings. -- Adam Nunez, PGNx Media
---- Sep 28, 2008
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