Buzz! Quiz World

Buzz! Quiz World is, as you might have guessed from the title, a quiz game. It is not, however, as you may have guessed from the title, a quiz entirely based on World questions, but rather a quiz that contains a full range of questions over many subjects. It seems to be following on from the equally confusingly titled Buzz Quiz TV, which was not just a quiz full of TV questions.

Confusing nomenclature aside, what is Buzz? Buzz quiz games are played out as a sort of interactive TV quiz show,  where each contestant gets a wireless buzzer, which they use to buzz in and select their answer to the many hundreds of multiple choice questions. The beauty of using the Buzz buzzers is that quite literally anybody can play Buzz. People who wouldn’t know which way to hold a PS3 controller can use the buzzer and enjoy Buzz. It’s one of the things that makes Buzz such fun, that anyone from your Gran to your nephew can play it.

The Buzz experience is highly polished, professional and always enjoyable. It’s particularly clever with picking up on when a player is doing particularly well, or on a long streak of wrong answers, and Buzz (voiced by Jason Donavan) always has a pithy comment to make for almost every occasion. Surprisingly, these comments don’t really get too repetitive, and genuinely add something to the game. The game offers a host of crazy characters that you can pick from, and it’s a lot of fun either with family or with a few friends and a few beers. If you have a PS3, I’d highly recommend that you own a Buzz Quiz game.

The problem for Buzz Quiz World, however, is that everything positive I have just written in the last two paragraphs is true for ALL Buzz Quiz games, not just Buzz Quiz World. Right here on Ready Up, I have previously reviewed Buzz Quiz TV and Buzz Brain of the UK, and they were both tremendous fun to play. The problem as I see it, though, is that one Buzz is enough. Unless you’re such a massive quiz fan that you’ve ripped through all the questions repeatedly, then I can’t see why you’d invest in yet another title.

That’s not to say that this new game offers no new features, but they are hardly compelling. I’ll admit that the fact that Buzz now calls you by name (assuming your name matches one of hundreds of pre-recorded names) is handy when you’ve all had a few jars and can’t remember who Player 3 is, but it’s not exactly a huge draw. There are more characters to choose from, and the menus are now slightly easier to navigate. You can also now select which rounds you like or don’t, and the game features clever little rounds such as asking logic questions rather than trivia. Everything is a plus, but if you already have Buzz Quiz TV sitting there I don’t know why you’d invest in this.