The Buzz! trivia series was a huge hit on the PS2 and created as much of a stir in the gaming community as the board game Trivial Pursuit did way back in the 1980s. There's absolutely nothing original about quiz titles but the average gamer’s fascination with all things trivial means that a ready made audience is always available. Clearly the drawbacks of converting any Playstation title to a handheld format means compromises have to be made and, while games like Killzone have wisely changed genre during their transition to the PSP, the nature of Buzz! means that the PS2 game has remained mostly intact. The key factor though is whether it's still as much fun to play as the more grown up versions on the consoles. So, is it?

Buzz! allows for three separate users to save their trivia progress from the start and each new games starts with the same gaming grid with just three categories to begin with: Snapshot Challenge, Top Rank Challenge and Quickfire Movie Challenge. Then you'll be forced to take on the Time Challenge, after which the selection branches out to three choices which cover music, celebrities and just about everything else you can think of. When you strip all the fancy titles away though, there are only really a handful of different quizzes using a combination of text, pictures and even video. There are supposedly 5,000 questions packed into the tiny UMD so the first few runs should provide more than a challenge for the old grey matter.



The quizzes themselves are mostly straight forward, although the Virus Challenge has the added element of both time and negative answers eating away at your score making speed and accuracy very important. The Snapshot Challenge is a little more arcade-like so after answering a question you'll be taken to a grid where you may select one square to reveal. If it makes any sense to you then you may opt to answer a question otherwise you can simply pass and attempt to uncover more of the image. All this is compered by your energetic host (played to perfection by Jason Donovan) who pops up everywhere giving both encouragement and sarcasm in equal measures. This really adds personality to the whole thing and the voice acting really is superb and incredibly hammed up. The presentation is good too, with clear text and a very user friendly interface.

The scoring system is pretty straightforward, with speed rewarded and all your high score are saved for you on the cart. The replay value is provided with a collection of awards that can be won as you fulfil various criteria such as answering a question in under a second, 20 questions correctly in succession or even if you attain Gold Medals across the board. Multiplayer fans are also catered for even if you only have a single PSP. The Quiz Host mode allows a player to become the quizmaster, asking questions which appear on the screen whist up to six players can battle it out. The various challenges can be very entertaining too, with our first game asking 'who can touch their nose with their tongue?' The self explanatory Pass Around also supports six players and is designed to fit almost any scenario so you can decide on the questions’ difficulty or even the length of the game itself. The other method allows you to enjoy the game on up to four PSPs thanks to the game sharing option.



There's no question that your first few plays of Buzz! will be a joy. It’s very entertaining and quite a challenge too. Unfortunately, as much as it tries not to, it still suffers from repetition so that by the time you've attained gold on each of the sections you may have answered the same questions on multiple occasions. It's all still good stuff though and the Multiplayer is especially entertaining and, given that this is being sold as a budget title, it's well worth a purchase.
By Andrew Blanchard on pspworld.com