No need to ask the audience, this is the best Buzz to date.
Unlike the Wii, features a lot of party games that are always strong, and never a let down. Singstar proved this at Christmas, so did GH3, and now Buzz is here to reinforce the fact PS3 can appeal to everyone, as Buzz is the most wide reaching audience grabber I have ever encountered.
Basically the game is split into 5 main channels, TV & Movies, Music, Lifestyle, Knowledge and Sport, which basically covers all the stops if you ask me. On top of the 5,000 you are offered there, you can download a further 500 more over the Playstation Store in individual themed packs - thats 500 questions per pack. Currently there are only 5 packs available ranging in intrest, but its a good indication of the quality of packs to come.
Finally, there is the options of creating your own quiz, and uploading for you and others to play or alternatively you can download other people's. Which provides an almost endless stream of user generated content constantly. There is no need to ever buy another Buzz! game, and if you grow tired of what's on the disc, there are a multitude of different options in which you can replenish and keep the experience fresh. This is indeed fantastic.
The heart of this game is in it's multiplayer, which introduces you to the ingenious High Stakes round and old favourites like Pie Fight, and makes for some truly high tension games, especially in Pass the Bomb. The single player, though a bit pointless, is fun online as you can face up to 3 other people over the net if you are a Larry loner, you get a similar experience as multiplayer but you lack the frantic atmosphere you may gain from your living room if you play multiplayer with up to 8 people.
Questions do begin to repeat, after a very long while, so if you're a constant player, you are going to perhaps have a slight advantage over newbies to the title. But, trust me, it'll be a while before you start to notice any repetition of content.
One thing I criticised in previous Buzz! games was the presentation. It was very simplistic and graphically was simply average. The question boxes and score boxes all do look the same, but they have neat little animations, as compared to appearing or sliding away. You now get jumping and even spinning boxes, which isn't really a deciding point on whether you buy the game or not, it just shows how much more effort has been spent on presenting a tried and tested area, and keeping it fun and exciting.
The character and player models are simply brilliant and look pretty good. The animations are terriffic with each player having their own set of moves and it adds a sense of reality to the game which has never been there before, it is also very funny. Surprsingly there are only something like 10 characters, but no doubt more will be made available through PSN for a small fee or in my perfect world for nowt.
The entire atmosphere of the quiz show is 100% more realistic than before. The music varies to build up tension, the auidence clap at the appropriate moments and are even varied enough with individual animations, it's fairly impressive. It's all in the small details which escalates this game above mediocrity, so much so, it needs binoculars to look down on it.
The new buzzers are brilliant, a little heavier but you don't have to go through the pain of untangling the wires before every play. However, initially they are annoying to set up as the instructions left me totally clueless of how to get them to actually work properly, which wastes around half an hour before you start the game, but after they are synced properly, they never really have to be again. Shame you have to plug a dongle in though for them to work, how come they can't work like the normal controllers??
Overall Buzz! is brilliant, it's a fine example of what Sony plans to do with user genrated content that accessible to everyone, Singstar launched it, Buzz has refined it and make it alot easier to do. I'm excited to see how Little Big Planet will continue this rise of accessibility. It's a game aimed at everyone and I'm afraid to say, I'm yet to have this much fun on Nintendo's "casual console" behemoth. Party game of the year? It may very well be.