A great game. The best game ever made!
At its crux, Buzz! Quiz TV is the same game that got quiz fingers twitching on the PlayStation 2 over the past few years, with its reenactment of daytime TV fare intact and benefiting from a little tender care upon its PlayStation 3 debut. Indeed, Buzz! Quiz TV's journey across to hi-def waters has served the game surprisingly well, the visual overhaul working well to reinforce the bright mood of the game with the virtual studio shining with all the vapid radiance of its real-life inspirations.
The format remains the same, with up to eight people taking to a generic quiz show hosted by the eponymous host, the perpetually gurning Buzz. Through a journey of seven rounds that commence with Point Builder and climax in The Final Countdown, Buzz! Quiz TV's games are exercises in quick fingers and cunning as players attempt to sabotage the efforts of their competitors whilst answering correctly as many questions as they can. Buzz! Quiz TV's main adornment to the old formula is the ability to choose topics between rounds, with the trailing player picking which category will form the basis of the next set of questions.
Rounds are picked out at random from a selection that's been well worn in the PlayStation 2 iterations with the one new addition coming in the shape of High Stakes, in which players gamble on their knowledge of a given topic. Bringing the ever-gratifying risk and reward device into play should work well, but in practice the questions prove easy enough to inspire all competitors to always lay down the highest price, nullifying any potential intricacy.
Indeed, that's a constant problem with play throughs using the game's admittedly generous database of 5,000 questions – with none of them ever putting up a significant challenge, most games descend into a question of fastest finger first, as the answers are usually apparent before the multiple options have emerged on the screen, and with latter rounds such as Point Stealer placing an emphasis on more devious tactics, it's not uncommon to have built a healthy lead only to see it evaporate on the last couple of rounds, giving the impression that knowledge is not a factor towards victory in the game.
That said, Buzz!: Quiz TV sessions never outstay their welcome, and it's credit to the team at Relentless that Buzz himself - a creation that is by his very nature grating – actually exudes his own strange charm, and never ceases to inspire wry grins and muffled chuckles. Likewise, the cast of characters, although drawn from type, still harbor an easy charisma that other games often struggle to acquire, be it in the exaggerated gestures of the mime artist or the clumsy stumbles of the game's resident spod.
But the bulk of Buzz! Quiz TV's appeal is in its self assured steps online, with many features that neatly sidestep some of the downfalls of the out of the box experience. Whilst an online multiplayer feature feels as ultimately redundant as the single-player mode – both working against Buzz's main appeal in being a party game to be played in close proximity to other participants – it's the wealth of downloadable content that's set to ensure that Buzz! Quiz TV is a permanent fixture in the PlayStation 3's disk drive.
With a host of downloadable question packs in the pipeline, there's to be an ever-flowing stream of new content that will constantly revive the Buzz experience, with acquired sets integrating themselves within the main game. Whilst this is commendable in itself, what really marks out Buzz! Quiz TV as a standout title is its support of user-generated content, with MyBuzz allowing people to set their own quizzes and unleashing them on the community at large.
Using a separate site to generate the questions, eight-question packs can then be uploaded to be picked up by other users. Whilst the natural prospensity of most people towards smut will ensure there'll be a fair amount of chaff to wade through, an easy to use filter system allows the best quizzes to rise to the top. It's a feature that will only show its true colours over time – as we write, the content posted ranges from questions about the minutiae of one user's workspace to a more satisfying set on the history of the Final Fantasy universe – but if Buzz!: Quiz TV goes on to ape the success of its predecessors it's more than likely within a few weeks of release a bewildering amount of questions will be available to constantly rejuvenate the game.
Sorry for the loooooooonnnnnnggggg review, but this game is PS3 at it's best, sound, picture, everything, 10 of 10, the best party game ever to buy!
tigertechie.