Buzz! The Mega Quiz
Score: 89% ESRB: Everyone 10+ Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment America Developer: Relentless Software Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 8 Genre: Puzzle
Graphics & Sound: Buzz! The Mega Quiz is a novel new game show for the PS2. I say novel because Buzz! is played with actual buzzers instead of the normal controllers. The characters and sets are interesting to say the least. If you watch through the intro, it'll show you how the contestants were kidnapped, I mean "selected" for the show. Your host, Buzz, looks like a muppet with a flip-top head. His associate is the much disproportioned Vanessa. The stages where the contestants stand are set up very much like Jeopardy. The contestants are hilarious. There are fourteen contestants to choose from, each of them very different, and they have three costumes to decide on. They all have their own "moves" too. There's at least four different things they do, depending on whether you get the question right or not. Each character also has a different voice (or lack of one in the case of the Mime). The things they say will make you laugh. We spent time between rounds just making the characters talk and dance to see what they could do. Not only do you get to select a contestant, but you also get to select the sound that their buzzer makes. There are 24 choices, including a chipmunk, a dog bark, a belch, and my personal favorite, "the evil laugh."
Gameplay: Buzz! The Mega Quiz gives you three different options to play: 1 Player, 2 - 4 Players, and 5 - 8 Players, when you select Play Buzz. 1 Player Buzz plays very much like The Weakest Link. You are given a time limit and questions. After each question, you can bank your money to save it, and start back over at $0, or you can try and double it on the next question. 2 - 4 Player Buzz is comprised of eight different rounds, and the Mystery Challenge. Each round has a different goal and a different feel to it. Our favorite was Globetrotter, where the winner of each question gets to choose a country to visit. The next question will be something about that country. If there are rounds that you don't particularly like, choosing Custom Game from the Main Menu allows you to deselect any rounds, with the exception of the Mystery Challenge. You cannot get rid of it, at least I didn't find a way to. 5 - 8 Player is just like 2 - 4, except it is played in 2 sets of 4 Players. From the Main Menu, you can also access Extras, Custom Game, and Options. Extras allows you to choose between Team Play, Quizmaster, and Quickfire Quiz. In Team Play, you can divide a large group of people into teams. Each team gets three lives and loses a life for each wrong answer. Whichever team lasts the longest wins. In Quizmaster, someone can opt to takes Buzz's place and ask the questions. Whatever the Quizmaster says is the right answer is undisputedly true for the game (whether or not it really is true), so choose your Quizmaster carefully. Quickfire Quiz is great when you just want to play a quick quiz contest. It allows you to play 10-100 questions. For each question, the first one to buzz in and get the correct answer gets the points. In the Options Menu, you can view the Hall of Fame where all your high scores are stored. There are also things such as Slow Poke Award, Itchy Trigger Trophy, Loser Award, and more. You can also turn Widescreen Mode on/off, turn Autosave on/off, and Load Data from the Options Menu. By default, Buzz! autosaves between each round. The good thing about leaving this on is that it reduces question repetition. The bad thing about it is that you have to wait on it to save. It's not that noticeable of a lag on Long and Regular length games, but in a Short game, it feels like you spend half the time saving.
Difficulty: Buzz! The Mega Quiz is an easy game to learn to play. Before each category, it walks you through exactly what you are supposed to do in that category, which is good since each one varies as to the rules. Buzz! provides three different difficulty modes: Easy, Medium, and Hard. Honestly I didn't see much difference between Easy and Medium, because I found them both to be very easy, but Hard did provide a little bit of a challenge. The one thing that really made the game difficult at times was the lack of a Pause button. It would have been nice to be able to pause the game, since most of the time you just don't have time to get though an entire game, especially on Long, without someone having to answer a phone call or take a restroom break. You do get pauses in between rounds, but that doesn't help with phone calls.
Game Mechanics: As I said before, Buzz! The Mega Quiz is played using buzzers instead of controllers. Honestly, it makes it much easier than if you had to use a controller. The buzzers are nice. They feel right in your hand and the buttons are easy to press. The big red button on top lights up when you need to press it between rounds. You also use it to buzz in on the rounds where you need to buzz in first before answering a question. For most rounds, you simply press the color button, blue, orange, green, or yellow, that corresponds to the answer you want to select on the screen. Each round tells you before the round what you need to do to answer. When you are playing 1 Player Buzz, you just have to press the color button that matches the answer and use the big red button on the top to bank your points. You have to bank pretty quickly after you've answered the question or it will start the next one on you. Overall, Buzz! is a fun multiplayer game. The more people you have, the better it is. The 1 Player Mode felt a little lacking to me, but the multiplayer definitely makes up for it. There's so many different ways you can play with more than one person. If you're going to have a group of people, you should definitely check out this game!
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
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