FutureFive New Zealand - Consumer technology news & reviews from the future
Story image
Fri, 1st Aug 2008
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Sony nailed the Buzz games on PlayStation 2, simple play mechanics, controls and a great design of the quizzes themselves made Buzz sit alongside Singstar as one of Sony’s most valuable franchises. While Singstar made the transition to the PlayStation 3 with relative ease and style earlier last year, Buzz has taken a little bit more time and has ended up being slightly less successful, at least on first inspection.

Buzz Quiz TV takes elements of all the previous core Buzz games (disregarding the Junior titles altogether) and puts them into a smooth package for the PlayStation 3. While Singstar made the leap with HD videos and gorgeous menus, Buzz Quiz TV is a slight ugly sister. The graphics are simplistic and showcase none of the power of the cell processor and are a bit of a disappointment to those expecting any sort of wow factor.

That being said, the leap to the PlayStation 3, the capacity of Blu-Ray discs and the PS3 hard drive have opened up an entire universe of possibilities for the future of the franchise, and this is what Buzz Quiz TV deserves to be judged on. The game itself comes with over 5000 questions on the disc but the potential for millions of player-generated questions and entire quizzes is opened up thanks to the My Buzz section of the game.

Imagine an entire online community devoted to creating new quizzes that can be downloaded to any PS3 anywhere in the world, that’s what is in store for Buzz Quiz TV purchasers who will never need to worry about the game becoming stale with an endless supply of new content in the future.

While Buzz Quiz TV isn’t going to set the world on fire with innovative new sound or graphics, it’s the online potential of the title that is truly exciting for fans of the genre. Oh, and the wireless buzzers make the experience a whole lot more interesting, now if only they could free up those Singstar microphones…