Why You Can Trust CNET Buzz! Quiz TV review: Buzz! Quiz TV
Thanks to its wireless buzzers and online play, the first Buzz for PS3 is a must have for trivia or party game fans. Make sure you have a widescreen TV though.
As a game, and a concept, Buzz has changed little in the years since it was initially released on Sony's PlayStation 2. Sure, there have been a number of variations — from music, sports and film to good ol' general knowledge — but the ingredients are basically the same as they were in 2005: take one smarmy host (voiced by our own Jason Donovan, he of the bouffant hair and Kylie kissing), a shed load of questions, a variety of rounds, a complement of flashing buzzers, a party of people and mix. The result: an enjoyable atmosphere of fun and rivalry that's entertained party-goers and trivia nuts alike.
Buzz! Quiz TV
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The first PlayStation 3 version of Buzz, Buzz! Quiz TV, doesn't radically alter the script but the rewrite does bring about a whole raft of worthwhile changes.
What's in the box?
Given that wireless controllers is one of the drawcards of the PS3, it's little surprise to learn that Quiz TV's buzzers are of the wireless variety if you opt for the AU$109.95 bundle. Although each buzzer requires two AA batteries to run, this will have Buzz veterans jumping for joy knowing that their meticulously planned trivia nights will now no longer involve half an hour of cord untangling at the beginning and at the end of the night.
Included in the combo package is a set of four buzzers, the game and a Bluetooth USB dongle, which allows you to have up to eight wireless buzzers "connected" at any one time. Intriguingly, the dongle also allows you to use your spiffy new wireless buzzers with older PS2 versions of Buzz on a PlayStation 2 — great news for the majority of us with non-backwards compatible PS3s.
The new game is compatible with the old, wired buzzers, allowing players to have either an all wired or all wireless set-up or, more likely, a mix of both. As with previous iterations of the Buzz franchise, Quiz TV also comes in a game only version, which retails for AU$59.95.
Playing with real people
If you've got your PlayStation 3 hooked up to an old school 4:3 CRT, you may want to give Quiz TV a pass. On 4:3 screens, Quiz TV is letterboxed, making both questions and scores extremely difficult to read on anything less than a monster TV — in fact, we developed neck cramp after just a few games of Buzz. The option, present in previous iterations of the Buzz franchise, to format the game for either a 4:3 or widescreen TV set was given involuntary redundancy.
The new Buzz makes good use of its native 720p output resolution; the visuals are smoother and sharper than before and, unlike some previous iterations of the game, are lag free. While there's a new character or two among the participant roster, most of the elements are instantly recognisable, including the overblown game show set and the eponymous host, Buzz, who retains his flip-top head.
Gone, though, is his co-host, the impossibly long-legged Rose. Her job of explaining each round's scoring system and method of answering has been given over to Buzz himself. He now gives a brief overview when announcing the next round, as well as dropping choice pieces of info in between questions. This piece of streamlining, combined with the virtual elimination of loading time between questions and rounds, speeds up the gameplay quite considerably, although hosts should explain the rules for each round to newbies, lest you have a revolt on your hands.
Relentless Software has steered clear of any innovation with the rounds, sticking with tried and tested favourites. The lack of any truly new rounds may disappoint keen Buzz devotees looking for something new, but this, combined with the right of the loser to pick the next round's topic, ensures closer gameplay, unless you're pitting a bunch of nine year olds against a Sale of the Century grand champion. And if your gaggle of friends are more likely to subscribe to NW and Who than the New Yorker or Times then you can narrow topics covered by selecting just one of the question categories or "channels" in Buzz-speak — hence the rather misleading title for this PS3-instalment of Buzz.
The quantity and style of the game rounds varies depending on the number of players taking part. For example, when playing with between two to four players there are eight rounds (Point Builder, Pass the Bomb, Fastest Finger, Pie Fight, Point Stealer, High Stakes and the Final Countdown), while five to eight player games consist of four rounds (Point Builder, Stop the clock, High Stakes and the Final Countdown).
On the internet
There's also a single player but, as before, answering a few rounds of trivia on your lonesome is about as much fun as washing your clothes, without the added benefit of having clean clothes to wear. It — the single player mode, that is, not clothes washing — has also been made redundant by the inclusion of online play. In Sofa vs. Sofa mode, compete play against remotely located friends or randoms in a shortened three round game (Stop the Clock, All that Apply and High Stakes). Although more than one person, on individual buzzers no less, can participate per sofa — or PlayStation 3 if we're going to be pedantic — can play as a team rather than against each other.
With about 5,000 questions on hand, repeated questions are a thankfully rare occurrence on Quiz TV. If you get sick of these there are a number of downloadable quiz packs (UK and Australian pop culture, sci-fi and National Geographic safari) already available for purchase, for between AU$9 and AU$13, on the PlayStation Network. Hopefully this will obviate the need for half yearly themed Buzz instalments at AU$60 a pop.
Stretching out the gameplay even further is Mybuzz, whose primary component is the Mybuzz website. On the site, Buzz maniacs can create eight question quizzes to share with the Buzz community. These can either be played on your Web browser or on Buzz! Quizz TV. Annoyingly to play MyBuzz quizzes in Buzz, you first have to create a playlist of quizzes, which can only be done via a Web browser. Like the scion of user-generated content on the internet, Wikipedia, MyBuzz quizzes skew heavily towards pop culture.
And the winner is?
If you have a PS3 and a widescreen tele and have owned or enjoyed a previous instalment of Buzz our advice is simple: buy Buzz! Quiz TV. You won't regret it. There's hours of trivial warfare to be had and, thanks to online play and the wireless buzzers, it can be played at any time. It's not perfect, however, as there are no difficulty settings — the majority of questions belong in the columns marked "easy" and "medium", with genuine brain stumpers in shorter supply than honest politicians.