Buzz! Quiz World – PS3 Review

Reviewed by Sam Atkins on January 3, 2010

Buzz! Quiz World - PS3 Review  | read this item

Much like their now infamously long running Karaoke series SingStar, Sony has a knack for releasing a plethora of Quiz games to the market. Buzz! has become synonymous with drunken Christmas parties, and fast became the best Quiz game on the market. Now a PS3 stalwart, has Buzz himself, or Jason Donavon as most know him, struck gold yet again with Buzz! Quiz World?

If you judge your quiz games by how well they do in a party environment, then the fact developers Relentless have changed very little for this new version can only be a good thing. As tense, competitive and nonsensical as the best Quiz shows on television, Buzz! achieves a universal appeal that few party games pull off. Thanks to subtle touches like selecting the category of questions at the start of each round, everyone playing, whether that is two people competing by themselves, 16 people sharing 8 buzzers between them, or 2 teams of 4 challenging each other across the internet will feel like they are on a daytime game show. Those who pick up every title in the series however would never be satisfied with a carbon copy of past entries. Can such small changes really make a difference though?

Creating profiles on Buzz has always been a very impersonal endeavour, but Quiz World attempts to rectify this through some changes to the way you go about this at the start of each quiz. When you begin a quiz, you can create a profile from scratch, or load one from those made before, you select your ‘avatar’, sound effect, costume colour and type the first letter of your name that will appear under your quiz podium.

Typing just the first letter allows you to pick from a series of pre-made names, so that when Buzz addresses you, he does so by name. This makes both the offline and online portions of the game that bit more meaningful, as Buzz will let others know of your accomplishments outside of the current quiz, for instance congratulating you on winning a round if you came last in the quiz previous. It’s just another element of the series that is sure to make quizzes that bit more competitive, seen in new rounds where answers are revealed letter by letter, adding to the tension once more.

One thing that Relentless nail each and every time with Buzz! is the visual flair they put throughout the experience. From the slick menus to Buzz’s intentionally low animated mouth, the quiz atmosphere is retained throughout. Questioned are delivered with clarity by a familiar sounding voiceover man, while Jason Donavon’s performance is as comical as it isn’t throughout. There are few times when you want more from the game aesthetically, a testament to how much thought has gone into making each element a seamless experience.

Buzz! Quiz World continues the high standards of the series so far, the timing making boring New Year parties a thing of the past. For those who never quite liked Buzz, there are no major changes to the formula, but for anyone with a taste for quizzing, this is yet another essential purchase.

Tags: Buzz!, Buzz! Quiz World, PS3 Review, Quiz, Relentless, SingStar, sony