I've been playing a bit of Buzz : Quiz TV on the PS3 lately, and it would form a good choice for my Sequel Me This series. In short, the biggest thing they could do here is this; include all the stuff that for some reason they didn't bring over from the PS2 versions of the game. It would be preferable if these things could be patched in, or at least made as a decent downloadable pack, but no doubt it will come in a sequel.

More question types
This isn't a matter of question categories, I have no problems there. I just wish there was more variety in the question types, and notably missing are some of the question types from previous versions. Where are the 'order these answers' questions? Or the 'older or younger' questions? Where is 'around the world'? Fact or Fiction? It is also annoying that one of the fun new variants, 'All That Apply', is only available if you play online against other people. Why would this not be available offline? The vast majority of rounds are of the 'Here is a question, pick the answer from these four choices' type. I have no problem with this being the most common type, but more variety would be appreciated.

Customising the gameplay
Again, this is another step backwards for the series. Previous versions allowed you to select short, medium or long games. In Buzz : Quiz TV, you start a game. That's it, no choices as to how long the game might be (I think offhand it is 7 rounds). Furthermore, it would be great to be able to customise your games so that you can play as many rounds as you like, in any order you like (with the obvious caveat that Final Countdown can only be the final round). This way you can cater to the particular group you are playing with. If you are playing with older people whose eyesight or reflexes aren't so good, playing several rounds that all consist of Points Builder would be good as it would reward knowledge instead of reflexes. If there is a particular round most people in the group don't like, then it can be removed.

Statistics
What happened to the statistics? At the end of a game, the game simply ends and you go back to the menu screen. What happened to finding out which person got the most right answers, who was the most enthusiastic, and who answered the questions the fastest? You could even break it down further into which categories they score better in. Having players able to keep an individual profile and keeping cumulative track of their score, wins, and even rivalries, would be much appreciated.

Couch vs. Couch play
When I first heard about the game, I was excited to be able to pit a team of 4 players in my living room against another group of players online. Alas, this is not the case and when playing online, it is one person per console. I think there is definitely scope here for team play. I don't know exactly what the structure would be, but I'm sure they can come up with something.

Improved user-created content
One of the interesting features of the PS3 version of Buzz is the ability to create a quiz on the web and then have it sent to your PS3, and share it with the world. There are a few limitations however. First is that the quiz can only contain 8 questions. This limitation was fairly established because they designers found that it was hard for people to create significantly more questions than that in a category. It would have been nicer to have that as a minimum and be able to have longer rounds. Even better would be to have a huge database of questions for that particular category, and then only have a few questions selected for the round in question. For example, no doubt there are a huge number of user-generated Simpsons quizzes. It would be great in the next iteration of the series if people could suggest via the website that certain quizzes be combined and added to an existing category instead of having the same old stuff rehashed.

Furthermore, you can't save other peoples quizzes to your hard drive. Everything is downloaded off the server on the fly. While this process does not take very long, it still seems uneccesary if you wanted to download them ahead of time so that you had a bunch of questions ready to go. Being able to add these into the normal game (possibly removing stat-tracking features if they were implemented) instead of having to play them as single 8 question rounds would also be good.

I think that covers most of the things I would like to see. Anything else that you would like to see in Buzz or a trivia game? Maybe an electro-shock headband peripheral to give players a shock if they get the answer wrong?

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Noby Noby Boy is a bizarre experience. The basic gameplay mechanic is interesting to play around with for a short time, but the lack of goals in the game means that interest is likely to be fleeting.

You play as Boy. Boy is a... creature that begins as 2 spheres joined together, a couple of legs on each, and a face plastered on one of those spheres. Each of your analog sticks controls one end of Boy. Thus pulling in separate directions stretches Boy. After a brief moment of elasticity, Boy starts to grow new segments in the middle, and gets longer. It's possible to stretch yourself across an entire stage and drape over the edge of them, and you can also shrink yourself at any time. There are no enemies in Noby Noby Boy, but each world is populated by various objects, and it is initially amusing to stretch your body in different directions and wrap yourself around some of the larger objects. You can also interact with objects by eating them if your head is large enough. This is where the game is a bit confusing, as I'm not sure what actually makes your head bigger. I assume this is from eating, but when I shrunk my body down to the starting size, sometimes my head was bigger than my tail, other times it was normal size. Thus some items can not be eaten until your head is big enough. If you eat something when you haven't stretched yet, you will poop it straight out. You will also poop out an object if you have stretched, but can't hold any more objects in your body.

And really, that is Noby Noby Boy in a nutshell. There are no obstacles and no goals, just a virtual playground and some physics to mess around with. Apparently eating some objects in succession means you will poop out a combined object, but I never noticed it, and objects can fly away so fast you don't really get the opportunity to see them anyway. While you do have control over it, the camera can be a bit troublesome at times. You might zoom it out to a desirable level, but then it may autozoom again based on your movements, or not be highlighting the part of your body that you want. The worlds are all randomly generated (and you can load a new map at any time), and some of the charm is seeing just what will turn up next. There are people roaming around (and will sometimes jump on your back for a ride if you are stretched), sometimes there will be giant mushrooms, sometimes people will drive around in cars, jungle gyms will appear to wrap yourself around, or windmill type constructs to get tangled in.

The graphics and sounds are all on a very basic level, but work as part of the games charm instead of against it. It is obvious that this came from the designer of Katamari, and a similar styIe is displayed here. Each part of your body can also jump, and by having both jump you can effectively fly up to the clouds and drape yourself over them if you desire. The jump button is also the same as the eat button, so it can be annoying to try and eat something and jump instead because you weren't placed exactly where you thought you were. The physics are interesting to play around with, and it can be fun to see your back half of your body slingshotting around while you only move the front around, trying to tie yourself into a knot, or watching your body fly about from explosive pooping after you shrink yourself while you have a full belly.

There is one overarching goal in Noby Noby Boy, and that is to grow Girl. This represents the online component of the game. The game records how much you have stretched, and this is added to a tally comprised of every online player in the world. At the outset of the game, Girl grows towards the moon, and has since also reached Mars. When these are unlocked, you can load maps on these worlds, with new objects that are unlocked. This is an interesting concept to make players feel like they are contributing to a larger goal, but it seems like the going is slow and only dedicated players who have worked out strategies to stretch while they aren't at their system are the main contributors. You can also play two players on the same system, which is fun for a short while as you can eat each other and poop each other out, but the camera focuses on player 1 and it's issues are exacerbated here.

Noby Noby Boy is an interesting concept, but is more like a virtual toy than an actual game. While you may only get an hour or two's enjoyment out of it, it's cheap price means it won't feel wasted. If you don't want to get stressed while gaming and just want to relax, then you may get more longevity out of Noby Noby Boy.

Score 6.0