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Gamertell Review: Buzz! Quiz TV for PS3
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Jenni Lada brings us information about all of the groovy new gaming imports from around the world.
Trivia games are usually only as good as the questions. Get a game with questions that are either too easy or too hard and very few people will play the game more than once. Get the right level of difficulty and and a trivia game can be played until everyone has played so much, they inadvertently memorized the all of the answers.
Buzz! Quiz TV, a trivia video game wrapped in a hokey game show skin, not only offers an ample supply decently balanced questions but also promises to keep refreshing questions through online updates and user-created quizzes.
Hit the Buzzer
The game takes on the facade of a cheesy TV trivia show complete with speed rounds, a pukey-voiced swoopy-haired host and over-the-top contestants. Each avatar has a stereotyped personalities - grunting yet strong cavegirl, beefy super hero in tights, etc. - with an appropriate sound effect taunt and between answer animations.
Questions are chunked according to five fairly standard categories: Sports, Movies & TV, Music, Lifestyle and Brainiac. Each game is winner-takes-all and played using four different types of rounds: Fastest Finger (the faster you press the right answer, the more points you score), Short Fuse (essentially Hot Potato with a cartoon bomb), Pie Fight (correctly answered questions are rewarded with points and a pie in your opposing avatar’s face) and Final Countdown (points are converted into time and the player with the most time at the end of the round wins the game).
In the single-player mode, not all of the round types are played. In the online mode (aka Sofa vs. Sofa mode) are played the same way and can be played with known friends or strangers.
Using a we component, you can also create a custom quiz and play it via MyBuzz.com. You can also rate other quizes and give them a try as well.
The game also ships with four Wireless Buzzers. Each bri since tghtly colored device has fur colored buttons that correspond to online answers to pick and a large red button that is used for simple buzzing tasks. All four connect to the PS3 (or PS2) wirelessly though a single USB adapter (also comes with the game).
And the Answer Is…
If you’ve played any of the arcade style trivia game, this will be pleasantly familiar. Colored buttons correspond to answers not only in hue but in relation to the position of the answer on the screen (top to bottom). The only time this might be an issue is if you are a point hog and a lot of answers are on the bottom, requiring a few point-deducting milliseconds to move your thumb an extra two inches to hit that button button. Assuming you are holding it with one hand, of course.
The Wireless Buzzers are am ideal addition that really does add to the overall experience of the game. Out of the box they feel a bit chintzy but, once you plop in a pair of AA batteries (not included, of course) into each controller, it adds just enough heft to psychologically improve their perceived legitimacy. The also work extremely well in terms of response time. To overcome the previously mentioned button arrangement, I simply rotate the controller 90 degrees and hold it with both hands so that my thumbs are each hovering over two buttons.
Questions from all of the categories were a decent mix if old and new, easy to hard. I’m certainly not a sports fan but there was wide enough variety of well-phrased questions that I was able to not lose too much ground against an online sport trivia pro. Also, since the early rounds only punish you for a wrong answer and not for being second to press a button, you can quickly regain points for well hit right answers.
The custom quizzes and downloadable updates are excellent touches, although the custom quizzes were initially difficult to find since they are not part of the main game and instead a web mode. Even so, both add enough replayability so that, even if you do overplay and manage to become bored with the game, you can pick it up the next time a few friends come over and play with fresh questions. Be prepared - new categories cost as much as $5.99 each and include 500 (or more) questions.
I have only two real gripes with the game. The first is that there are few customizable options. You cannot pick the type of game you’ll be playing so, depending on your single-player or multiplayer choice you get what you get. Second, and semi related, is that the text size is too small and cannot be resized for hard-of-seeing contestants. This is finally a game your grandparents might enjoy paying and most of them probably won’t be able to see the questions and answers unless they sit a foot from the screen. I’ve touched on this before (with Halo as an example) but game companies still don’t seem to understand that not everyone has a large, HD widescreen TV.
Not so much a gripe as a bit of oddity is that the single-player mode is not very competitive. Instead, you try to get a the highest score possible to get ranked on the Leaderboard. Not that exciting but still nice that you can play on your own.
Winner, Winner, Lobster Dinner
This game works well, is fairly easy for anyone to play and even comes with cute game show-esque wireless controllers complete with a big ol’ red button on top. Even if you exhaust the seemingly limitless database of trivia, rest assured there will be plenty more to download, or you can simply go online and beat the bejeezus out of an unknowing opponents.
Sure, the cartoony animations, dialog and wacky characters can be a bit annoying at times but the large database of quiz questions makes it worth it for any trivia buff. This is a great group game that will help fill in those awkward silences at your next holiday gathering.
Site [Buzz! Quiz TV] Read [PlaystationLifestyle] Also Read [PS3Trophies]
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