The Buzz! series, developed by Brighton based Relentless, is the only one of Sony’s leading ‘social’ games left lurking in the PS2 era without a next generation update. SingStar on PlayStation 3 brought the newly founded SingStore along with ‘My SingStar’ to the table, and the new iteration of the PlayStation Eye presented vastly improved technology; while both still managed to retain their core values. So now that SCEE are preparing to release the next generation re-incarnation of Buzz! in the form of ‘Buzz!: Quiz TV’, what new features and enhancements does it pack on the Blu-ray disc to entice you to buy in? Read on to find out…

Much like SingStar’s entry into the next generation, the fundamentals of Buzz! remain the same. The general presentation, style, and of course the game show host have all been carried over from its previous versions. Fans of the series won’t have any trouble with the gameplay: as before, when playing a multiplayer game, each is made up of seven rounds. ‘Point Builder’ and ‘Final Countdown’ are locked as the first and last rounds respectively, however rounds two to six are randomised in to different combinations of round types. Most of the round types will be recognised by those familiar with the PS2 versions – classics such as ‘Pie Fight’ and ‘Pass the Bomb’ live on, while the addition of some new rounds give the game a fresh feel. A new ‘High Stakes’ mode gives you the chance to determine how many points you win by stating how much you’re willing to stake on the next question. You’re given a loose topic (for example “the next question is about members of a rock band group”), after which you can choose to bet 50, 100, 250 or 500 points. If you answer correctly, you receive the amount you previously bet, however answer wrongly and it’ll be swiped from right under your nose. During our testing throughout various multiplayer games, the points table shifted places numerous times and you really have no idea who was going to come out on top – just as it was looking like fortunes were swinging your way, you’d blow it on the next round and end up in last place.

Talking of losers, a great modification made along with the series’ next generation entry is that the player with the lowest score now gets to choose the next round topic. Unlike previous versions which were released in categories of topics therefore your entire quiz was based on that single topic, Buzz!: Quiz TV packs in a whopping 5,000 questions each fitting into one of the following topics: Lifestyle, Knowledge, Movies & TV and Music. One of the latter can be chosen when starting your overall game (or you can choose to have questions from all categories, called the ‘Channel Hopper’), then at the beginning of each round a sub topic is chosen (for example Music could be split into Oldies, 80’s Music, 90’s Music and Recent Music). The ability to choose category caters for a much wider audience, so everyone can get involved with this one game instead of having to buy numerous versions to please everybody.

In terms of visual improvements, Buzz!: Quiz TV obviously won’t push polygons like Killzone 2, but it really doesn’t need to. Relentless have given the virtual studio a total refurbishment, and this time they really manage to capture the quiz show atmosphere. The studio is packed out with an audience, seemingly each member individually rendered, highlighted as they humiliate and chuckle at those who answer questions wrong. The signature sweeping wide camera shots across the studio coupled with close-ups on each contestant really bring the quiz show atmosphere into your front room, and while any sense of realism is brought back down to earth by the over enthusiastic but admittedly amusing host Buzz (hey, at least it’s not Bruce Forsyth), the tacky sense of a Saturday night TV quiz show remains. As for characters to play as, not only has the selection vastly increased but the quality of their 3D models has too. Each character has unique animations relating to their emotion (effected by how well they do in the game), and while they can repeat themselves sometimes it does feel a lot more personalised than previous iterations.

While the virtual side of the game has had much improvement, it’s not the only area that’s improved: the hardware has followed the same strategy. While fundamentally doing the same thing and incorporating exactly the same button layout as the old PS2 controllers, the buzzers packaged with Buzz!: Quiz TV have one main difference: they’re wireless. Unfortunately, Sony didn’t have any of the wireless buzzers on hand for us to try out, but having to drag out and untangle the wired PS2 equivalent to write this preview reminded us exactly why wireless is the way forward. If you’re not bothered with going wireless and have a set of PS2 buzzers lying around, then you can of course use these with the game.

Okay, so. Graphics – check. Gameplay – check. Hardware – check. Guess what - we’ve saved the best till last. If you look at the direction Sony took SingStar in its next generation overhaul, then you can expect to see Buzz! speeding exactly the same way any time now, in metaphoric terms towards a giant neon sign beaming the word ‘community’. Relentless have had big plans for Buzz! in terms of embracing the PlayStation Network from the start, and they’re not setting out to disappoint. There are two main components to Buzz! online, these being competitive play and extra content. Competitive play, dubbed ‘sofa against sofa’ by the development team, allows teams based in separate locations to battle it out against each other in traditional Buzz! fashion over the PlayStation Network, enabling that quiz show fanatic’s dream resembling ‘Family Fortunes’ to come true. Now for the more impressive part: extra content. As you would expect, Sony will be releasing add on question packs as premium content through the store, bringing the possibilities of themed packs to accompany current affairs, or new releases – for example, on release of the upcoming James Bond film Quantum of Solace this October, Sony could release an ‘All Things Bond’ set of questions for fans of the series. So we’ve got premium content – but here’s the killer. Using a special web interface, players of the game can write and use their own set of questions (obviously, accompanied with a set of answers) for use in the game. Having a family get together? Why not create a set of special questions based on family events in the past? It doesn’t stop there. You can make your quizzes public, meaning users can create quizzes on their favourite TV series and upload them for others to play for free. Furthermore, you can even track progress to see how well people are doing on your quizzes, and view their popularity.

Buzz!: Quiz TV takes the winning formula of Buzz! from the previous generation, adds new features, mixes things about and generally improves the experience. The wireless buzzers will certainly be a worthy addition, and the online functionality will no doubt not only take the gameplay to a new level, but offer unprecedented expandability that if pulled off properly, will be fantastic. Simply put, even after getting through the mammoth 5,000 questions on the disc, it’s actually impossible to run out of questions. At time of writing, the online servers to test the wealth of online functions (including the leader boards) weren’t up and running, but Sony have assured us that this will change in the near future, so come back soon for another preview specifically focusing on the online side of things. Until then, nice to see you, to see you…

By Tom Eccles