Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz PS2 review

Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz for PS2Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz is the latest U.S. release in Sony’s “Buzz” series of trivia party games, which include the more adult-oriented “Buzz” series and the kid-oriented “Buzz Junior” series, this latest game is in the former category.

Like the last game, Buzz: The Mega Quiz, this one stars the titular Buzz character as your host. He’s a loud, game-show type with a round head and a big mouth (which basically splits his head into two halves horizontally, sort of resembling Terrance and Phillip . . . and the rest of the Canadians, from South Park, except he actually has a mouth. And uses it to the fullest of his ability) and will be your host throughout Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz.

The most unique aspect of Buzz is that the game uses unique controllers that feature four-colored buttons and one big red button at the top, and comes in a set containing four of these controllers (although you can also buy just the game separately). The controllers are connected to each other so that you only have to plug the set into the USB port to play four-player. And if you have two sets, then 8-player play is possible. This makes Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz a great party game, as it’s easy to set-up a game for more than two players and the simple “game show”-style of the controllers assures that anyone can use them, even if they aren’t gamers.

And what is more accessible than a trivia game?

Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz logo

System: PS2
Also On: None
Released: US March 11, 2008 – EU October 19th, 2007
Genre: Trivia Game
Players: 1-8 Players (Buzz Buzzer Controllers required, comes packaged in a set with four buzzers)
Save: Requires an entire 8MB Memory Card to save your game. Saves automatically. Saving also reduces question repetition.
Developer: Relentless Software
Publisher: Sony

As long as you and your friends are into movies, and especially if you are movie buffs, then you’ll definitely be able to have a good time with Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz.

Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz Character ArtworkHowever, it must be said that Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz is virtually the same exact game as Buzz: The Mega Quiz, the only real difference being that this game focuses on movie trivia only. So if you have Buzz: The Mega Quiz, and you aren’t big on movie/actor trivia, then there’s really nothing new to see here, all they added was a couple of new buzzer sounds, a few new characters, and two “new” rounds . . . . That’s all!

Returning modes that you’ll remember from last time include the likes of: QuizMaster, which allows you to submit your own questions to pit against your friends, QuickFire Quiz, which simply asks you a set number of questions (up to 100), Custom Game which allows you to pick exactly which rounds you want to play through and Team Play, which naturally divides the group up into teams.

Like last time, you can choose a name, a character (with a few additions), an outfit (although typically they only have three) and a unique buzzer noise for each player, for every mode. And if you just want to jump right into the action you can select “Quick Game” and it’ll do all the above for you. The game also supports the Playstation Eye, but in no significant way that’s it’s not even worth mentioning (oops).

If you are playing by yourself (no way to play Buzz) then you’ll play a unique game that is made up of two rounds that you only find in single player. These rounds are “Time Builder” and “Hotseat”. In Time Builder you want to answer the questions correctly, as each miss will take away from how much time you have to answer the questions you’ll be asked in Hotseat. In Hot Seat each questions points build on the next, but if you miss one answer you lose ALL your points. In order to not lose them you can “Bank” them by hitting the big red buzz button, but if you bank them then you’ll have to start building your points up from zero again. How long can you last without getting a question wrong? When the single player is over you’ll be ranked amongst previous players of the mode (if you have a blank memory card that is, as Buzz takes up an entire 8MB Memory Card to save your game).

In multiplayer, you play a variety of different rounds. These rounds are all fun and great, and there are two new ones, but they are exactly the same as last time, except the questions revolve around movies.

The rounds you will play with others include:

Hollywood Stars: This mode is pretty much the same as “Point Picker” from Mega Quiz. Except you have unique categories based on not only movie categories like movie genres like Horror, Action, Drama or Thriller, as well as general categories like Animals, Stunts, Directors, Sequels, Villains, etc. The coolest part about this mode though is that they even have categories based on certain actors. A few examples being: Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Jeff Goldblum and Cameron Diaz.

The Fastest Finger
:
True to it’s name, this round has each player clicking the colored buttons as fast as they can. You need to answer the question correctly to score points, but the biggest amount of points is given to the player who can answer the quickest! The coolest aspect of this round is the fact that it tells you how quickly each person answered, and so it’s always a race to be the first person to answer WITHOUT answering wrong. This equals for a very fast paced and “tense” round. And one of the funnest.

Fact or Fiction: Just like the true and false mode from the last game, Buzz will ask you a question (often regarding a particular actor) and you’ll have to answer whether you believe the question is fact, or fiction. (Didn’t exactly need a description did it).

Top Rank: You have to put the answers into the correct order as quickly as you can. This can range from easy (such as having the words “Roger” “Framed” “Who” “Rabbit”) to putting movies in chronological order (like a list of Sylvester Stallone movies).

Pie Fight:
This unique mode offers up questions and whoever gets the question right first (and only the first person to answer correctly) gets the privilege of tossing a pie at their opponents! Get hit with a pie twice and you are out until the next round. But BE CAREFUL! You can not only hit your opponents with a pie, but you can even hit yourself! And YES, once again it is inevitable that you will accidentally knock yourself out . . . . which will play nice with those who you just pied! To throw the pies you use the big red buzz button when the crosshair goes over the opponent you want to splat. This round is fun and very cool, although it’s a bit questionable why they allowed you to hit yourself with a pie (which doesn’t make sense logically) . . . but only if you are the person throwing the pie. No one else will mind if you knock yourself out!

Rollover
: In this round, points that you would’ve recieved for answering a question right go into a “pool” of points if you get the question wrong. The pool keeps building until a player gets the question right, then they receive all the points in the pool! A cool idea for a round.

Point Stealer:
Ahhhh, Point Stealer! Definitely one of the funnest rounds and one that uses the big red buzz button (as not all of them do). In this round, the first person to answer correctly gets to steal points from an opponent of his selection! This round can be very entertaining. And not only that, but it can be devastating if you have one player who has been in the lead the whole game. You can be assured that the leader has a very good chance of being in last place after this round is all said and done (as long as THEY aren’t getting all the questions right). What also makes this round interesting is the fact that it’s based around pictures . . . blurry pictures that slowly get clearer along with the multiple choice answers that slowly type themselves out . . . what this means is that you’ll inevitably have one person in the group who buzzes in to answer before they can even make out the picture or answers, basically guessing their way through. And sometimes they are always right!

The Final Countdown:
My personal favorite mode, the Final Countdown gives each player a bar of time based on their score (so the person in the lead will have the longest bar, giving them the edge. Quite a bit unfair if you ask me), you then will have to answer questions and the person who answers fastest will be rewarded with more time . . . but look out! If you answer wrongly, then you’ll LOSE a large amount of time . . . the last player standing wins the round! This round is extremely intense and fun and it gets faster with less time to answer the questions as you play. What’s really fun is when you have one person in the lead with the biggest amount of time, and another player with a smaller amount of time who actually manages to stay in the game due to getting questions right. And expect lots of uproarious laughter if you can actually have a player come in from behind and win against the leader who was allotted the most amount of time. A very, very fun round.

Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz is really a game that will only appeal to a certain audience, and that audience is people that are big fans of trivia games as well as big movie buffs. The simple fact of the matter is that if you are a not a big movie buff, then you will likely not be able to answer half the questions. Unlike Buzz: The Mega Quiz which asks you general questions on a variety of subjects.

The cool thing here though is that if you are into movies and/or enjoy movie and actor trivia, then you’ll definitely have a blast with Buzz. And since the trivia ranges from old classics to modern films, including movies like Shrek and as modern as Spider-Man 3, it ensures that even non video game players will be able to get some of the questions right. This makes Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz an excellent party game, particularly for those who never played Buzz: The Mega Quiz, because they will not notice that everything has been recycled for this game.

And therein lies my biggest complaint. Literally nothing has been added to this game to make it very much different from the previous one. Even the “new” rounds are pretty much the same as before! Fact or Fiction is pretty much the same thing as the “true or false” round, they just swapped out words. Same thing goes for Hollywood Stars . . . I’m sorry but giving genre names and the names of actors instead of general questions categories and handing it a different name doesn’t make it a different mode. You still select a category and are asked questions about that category, nothing has changed. Although I commend them for having categories based on individual actors, since that’s always fun because every question is about that actor.

The only real new mode is Rollover, which is a good idea. Then you have the fact that they only added a few more characters . . . Even the animations for most of the characters as well as Buzz and Rose himself are the same. And they’ve grown tired after having seen the first one (a comment many of my friends made who also played Buzz: The Mega Quiz with me when I reviewed that) and as one friend pointed out, the witty jokes and humor from the first game has largely been replaced with Buzz simply quoting famous movie lines . . . which is fine and it works, but it just feels like not much effort was put into it. And the graphics are exactly the same as before, although you do get to watch actual clips from movies . . . so that’s a plus anyway.

But hey, you won’t even notice if you weren’t a fan of Buzz: The Mega Quiz, so this game is fine for casual gamers looking for a game they can play with all their movie-loving friends. So if that’s what you’re looking for, then you can’t do wrong with Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz. Just don’t expect greatness.

FUN FACTOR: 7.0

Buzz: The Hollywood Quiz is a casual trivia game made for those movie-buff friends of yours to play when everyone comes over to watch movies and is looking for something to do afterwards. It’s a great party game and you really can’t go wrong as long as you have friends who are big into movies. Only get this though if you have friends, it is not a game to play single player and there is no online mode. On the definite plus side, you can play four players with only one buzzer set (it plugs into the USB and not the controller port) and it even supports 8-players if you have two sets!

Graphics: 6.0
Nothing to see here. Even the animations have been recycled from the last game. But it gets the job done.

Music & Sound: 6.0

It does the job but it’s nothing special. At least the menu music is nice, and there’s lots of voice acting including the fact that every question is spoken, a definite plus. However Buzz’s voice itself can be somewhat annoying, and there will most likely be people in your party who will be annoyed very quickly with the tone of the game. There’s also been lots of recycling, as most of what Buzz says outside of the movie quotes are quips that were also in the last game.

Ingenuity: 5.0
It’s a trivia game that does nothing new from the last installment. But hey you can play 8-player! That counts for something. Definite ingenuity points are lost though for the fact that the game takes up an entire 8MB memory card to save your progress, which should’ve been fixed from the last game.

Replay Value: 8.0
As long as you have friends to play with, then you will definitely be have a fun time as long as you can get into the game. And with 5,000 questions, it’ll last you quite a long time. However the fact that there is no online play, and only one real new mode, is pretty ridiculous.