Buzz! Quiz TV

Review - Paul goes user-generated

Wireless controllers are brilliant, sure they've been around in one form or another for a while now but it's only with this generation of consoles that they've become standard. No longer are we literally tied to the console by wires that threaten to trip up anyone that dares to come close. While it obviously depended on the size of your room, for me the old wired Buzz controllers on the PS2 were a particular problem since they seemed to come with a noticeably shorter cable to that of the normal PS2 pad, therefore requiring considerable furniture shifting to allow four people to sit and play comfortably together.

So, its perhaps no surprise that my favourite thing about Buzz: Quiz TV, the series' first appearance on the PS3, is the arrival of the long awaited wireless buzzers. It may seem like only a subtle change in some ways but it really does improve the overall experience when all the contestants don't have to sit on the edge of their chairs and grapple with a tangle of wires.

Of course that's not all that's new about TV Quiz, the shift onto the PS3 has seen the series take the plunge and go online. Not only is there online multiplayer via an enjoyable 'Sofa vs. Sofa' mode, perhaps more significantly there's the chance to create your own quizzes via the Buzz: Quiz TV website and download them onto the PS3 to use in-game. Best of all you're not limited to only using your own new content; you can also download quizzes created by other players around the world.

Considering the life span of a quiz game tends to be limited by the number of questions on its disk the ability to constantly add new material is something of a godsend and immediately elevates Buzz: Quiz TV into a new league. Obviously the quality of this new content will only be proven over time and there will no doubt be a lot of dross but the potential is defiantly there and that's worth admiring on its own. SCEE are planning to release regular official question packs, the first few of which were live on the PlayStation Store at launch; which at should provide a steady stream of quality new content if the user created stuff isn't up to much, although obviously at a price.

Aside from the fancy new wireless controllers, the online mode and ability to create and share your own quizzes its pretty much business as normal. The actually quiz experience is comfortably familiar with only one genuinely new round added to the mix alongside old favourites like Point Builder, Pass The Bomb, Fastest Finger, Pie Fight and Point Stealer. That new round is called High Stakes and involves betting points based on your confidence about the subject offered, get the question right and you win the points, however, get it wrong and you get that amount deducted from your score. The finale, Final Countdown, now involves having your podium lifted off the floor to a height proportional to your score before the clock starts ticking and you slowly sink to the floor having to answer questions to push yourself back up. Inevitably the highest at the end is the winner and falling to the floor means you loose. This does mean it's possible to blow a considerable lead in the final round if you have some rotten luck with the questions but I guess that's part of the fun.

Presentation-wise things look slick enough, with Buzz and his surroundings looking nice in all their high-def glory. As ever, how you feel about the 'amusing' nature of Buzz and the contestants is a personal thing and while there are those that will find him an irritation he never gets in the way of proceedings and as ever the meat of the quiz itself is always allowed to shine.

Although Buzz: Quiz TV is undoubtedly the best Quiz game on any of the current gen consoles (not that its' overwhelmed with competition) there are still a few niggles that deserve a mention before we go any further. While the Sofa vs. Sofa online multiplayer mode is a very welcome addition it does come across as a little half-baked. Half the fun of competing with other people online like this is in the interaction, yet Quiz TV fails to support online video or audio chat in any way making it feel very much like you're taking-on a soulless AI opponent rather than a living breathing team elsewhere in the world.

Another irritation is the inability to pause or even exit a quiz once you've started it. I understand that pausing a quiz could potentially lead to all kinds of cheating but some kind of system where all players have to agree to the pause or even an option to turn on or off the pause ability would have been useful. As it is, once you've started a quiz there's no way out other than pressing the PS button and quitting the game which can be a pain when someone needs the loo or you simply want to go back and change something in the setup.

It's also a shame that you're only real control over the quizzes themselves is the genre of questions you're answering. Considering the move elsewhere to give more control to the user it seems a bit of an oversight not to allow gamers to configure the order and number of rounds each quiz involves or at least offer a few different presets for those wanting a longer or shorter experience.

Buzz was the best quiz game around in the last generation of consoles and there's nothing here to suggest it's going to be ousted from that position anytime soon. It may be basically still the same central game but the addition of user created content and wireless controllers make it feel like a step forward for the franchise, albeit a slightly hesitant one. With the few niggles fixed and some extra work put into the slender online options you'd be talking about pretty much the ultimate quiz game, as it is this there's room for improvement but what's here is still huge fun.

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