Review: Buzz! Master Quiz

Buzz! Master Quiz
SCEA, Relentless
Available for Playstation Portable

Buzz! Quiz the popular trivia game has always been on the Playstation console but now Sony has moved this fast-fingered game to the handheld market with Buzz! Master Quiz on the Playstation Portable. Our favourite Muppet-like host is bringing the trivia for some new and lightening fast fun and we’re grabbing our bag of useless knowledge in order to review this sweet game.

Much like the Playstation 2 and 3 version of Buzz!, Master Quiz plays out like a TV show quiz game with Buzz as your host guiding you through several unique rounds of trivia questions. Each round has its own way of making you answer the questions or earning your points. Top Rank quizzes have you ordering things such as "The," "Strikes," "Empire," and "Back" to form a Star Wars title and four actresses from the oldest to the youngest. Meanwhile, a Picture This quiz will show you a portion of a picture -- the game has more than 1,000 licensed images, videos, and tunes -- and ask you a question based on it. So, if you can identify David Bowie's chin from a revelled tile, answering a question about who sang "Fame" will be that much easier.


There are over 5000 questions to answer in the game and 9 different rounds to answer questions in. You have the choice of playing a solo game or a multiplayer game - local or online. Playing a solo game will have you playing through 15 rounds of trivia which takes about 2 hours to finish. You can save your progress through so don’t worry about the length of the games.

Though you won’t get the same full bodied avatars you get in the Playstation 3 version of Buzz!, you will get to choose an avatar to represent you throughout the game. They will be your profile and save all your information, trophies and records for the game. You will be able to save up to 3 different profiles, so your friends or family can have a profile too.

The local multiplayer mode will allow you and up to 5 friends play a game called Pass Around, where you use your one PSP and the game will randomly pick players to answer questions during the rounds. Each round is similar to the solo game with unique game play elements to make the trivia answering harder, however there will be a few differences to make the game a little harder for your friends to win.

With the Quiz Host mode, one person keeps hold of the handheld and asks questions for up to six players before inputting their scores onto the PSP. There's some fun to be had here, particularly when the game goes off the trivia path and requires hosts to set mini-challenges like seeing which of the players can make the best impressions of William Shatner, or awarding points to whoever can touch their tongue to their nose.

The wireless multiplayer mode allows up to 4 players to play from one disc via 4 PSPs. The host can set the number of questions, difficulty and categories. There are no media questions in this game though, only basic 4 answer trivia questions.

I personally am a huge fan of the Buzz! TV Quiz game for the Playstation and suggest that every PS3 owner have a copy in their collection, however playing on the PSP is much harder to have fast fingers without a colour-coded buzzer which made the game harder for me. Playing the console version, you can memorize the position of the buttons easily, but the PSP version was much harder to memorize and my answers and buzz time suffered greatly because of that.


Visually the game isn’t as cool to look at as the PS3 version, but when you’re dealing with a handheld game you don’t expect high-res graphics. Mostly the game is text based, rather than graphics but really when you’re playing a trivia game, do you care what it looks like? Buzz is still cute as a bug with his Muppet foam-like body and red shiny suit.

The sound is very low but you can still make out Buzz’s little witticisms if you crank the volume up. Much like the console versions, Buzz repeats himself a lot but you learn to ignore it after a while and just pay attention to the important stuff - the trivia questions.

Being a huge trivia buff, I love a good trivia game especially one I take on the road with me and share with friends. I would have liked to have seen the developer make a game with smaller solo modes but thankfully you can saved in the middle of game play. Buzz! Trivia is the probably the series of games on the market today, so I can’t help but suggest picking this game and any other game available to play with your family and friend. With a great line-up of questions, a quirky host and trivia rounds that keep you on your toes, Buzz! Master Quiz is the best trivia game for your handheld system and I hope Sony and Relentless make more games for the series.

Rating: 8 out of 10
Buy it!

Review: Buzz! Quiz TV

Buzz! Quiz TV
SCEE, Relentless
Available for Playstation 3

Sony has finally brought the game show world to the Playstation 3 with the release of their newest instalment of the Buzz! franchise, Buzz! Quiz TV which combines fun and wackiness with trivia on your home console. So grab your buzzers and your useless knowledge, cause its trivia time!

Setup like a crazy game show with a muppet-like host, Buzz! Quiz TV pits you against real or AI opponent in a test of knowledge through several unique and goofy multiple choice question rounds. Games can be played alone against the computer opponents, with 3 local friends or online with 3 complete strangers. The game bundle comes with 4 wireless buzzer pads, so everyone in the house can start playing right away without having to buy more controllers. Also the game does have a parental controls to keep the questions family friendly for the younger players too, if need be.



At the beginning of the game, you can choose from several interesting stereotype avatars to represent you during gameplay like the bubbly cheerleader, the super hottie spy chick or the rock star and then you get to choose their costume type and buzzer sound. These avatars represent you during the game, so when you’re losing they’ll freak out or cry and if you’re winning, they’ll jump for joy or dance. Each character has their own unique reactions to what’s going on to the game.

No matter what type of game you’re playing, they each have a series of rounds that have a unique set of rules that you must follow to win points. “Stop the Clock” for example, awards the most points to the players who answers the question right the fastest and “Pass the Bomb” has players passing a bomb back and forth as they get questions right until finally the bomb blows up in someone’s face.

Online multiplayer games have several rounds that end on the “High Stakes” round which have players betting their points against how well they know the question topic (think final jeopardy but with several questions), while local multiplayer games have several rounds that end on the “Final Countdown” which has players boosted on platforms which heights are based on their point amount. Everyone must answer questions correctly and quickly to avoid falling towards the stage and being tossed out of the game. Last player to hit the stage wins.

Probably the coolest part of Buzz! is the new user generated content which allows you to go online and create quizzes based on topics of your choosing, which can then be played and rated by other players online. No naughty content though because those quizzes will just be censored or can be reported by other players as inappropriate and removed.

While the questions barely ever repeat even after 20 games, the developers plan to release add on question packs on the Playstation Network, so gamers will be able to play with other categories besides the original few that came with the game. A horror trivia add on has already been released for download for only $5.99 CAN.



The level of difficulty in the trivia questions is pretty main stream, so as long as you haven’t been living under a rock for the last 50 years, you should be able to get most of these questions. The topics cover everything from movies, music and TV to nature, famous people and technology, so this game has a little bit of something for everyone.

The fun and wacky 3D avatar are a hoot to play with and often make you giggle. The mime character even had my boyfriend laughing with his stupid “running into the wall” gag. The whole game has this shiny, high gloss look to it, almost like someone dipped it in baby oil. Each character except for the host is a wacky 3D cartoon character trying to represent some human stereotype or character from a movie. The host, Buzz looks more like a creation from the Jim Henson Workshop, than any human being.

The host is cute but he really does repeat himself a lot after a few games and it does get boring. The only way to avoid the same sound bites is to change up your avatars to get different responses and gags throughout the rounds. I personality liked the Cave girl and the Spice girl wannabe.

With the hype of the Nintendo Wii as the new party game system, I love to see Sony grabbing amazing games like this that appeals to the older party crowd. This is the type of game I could see my family sitting down and playing at our next get-together as opposed to me biting my nails as my sister swings my Wii remote around my $1800 flat screen TV.

Rating: 9 out of 10
Buy it!