The Buzz Quiz Games

The Buzz quiz games started life on the PlayStation 2 in 2005. Buzz brought the quiz game to consoles as a virtual game show like the kind you would see on TV. Its unique selling point was the special controllers that are required to play the game. These really bring home the game show idea and are much more satisfying than just pressing the buttons on a regular controller. They were also a really good way to get non-gamer members of the family to join in too, as the buzz controllers were far easier to get your head around than a DualShock 2.

Buzz continued its line of games onto the PlayStation 3 with Buzz: Quiz TV, now with wireless controllers which streamlined the concept even more and made it more accessible for comfortably playing in the living room in a big group. If you have two sets of controllers you can have up to eight players which is fantastic, though I have not personally had the chance to test more than four players.

The controllers work really well and are still reliable to this day. They have a big, red, satisfying Buzz button on top, which is quite underutilised, and then four color buttons which usually correspond to the four answers as each question is multiple choice. On the downside the wireless controllers require 2 AA batteries per controller so that adds up fast. As a side note don’t accidentally leave your batteries in the controllers for extended periods as they like to leak and these controllers aren’t the cheapest.

A set of four wireless controllers seems to be about £40 on eBay and fingers crossed they still work. The USB ones are a bit cheaper but the wires aren’t as long as you would like so make sure it fits your room first. The Buzz games themselves also aren’t cheap with prices between £20-40 for those too.

The PlayStation 3 got four stand alone Buzz titles: Buzz: Quiz TV (2008), Buzz: Brain of the… (2009), Buzz: Quiz World (2009) and Buzz: The Ultimate Music Quiz (2010) which was also the last full Buzz title released, it was only followed by a smaller downloadable game.

The Buzz: Brain of the… title is unusual because they released about 20 different variants for different countries. For example the UK got Buzz: Brain of the UK and the questions contained within were more relevant to the UK.

The games are still really fun to play today. The style of game however, is not to everyone’s taste. The main character Buzz, voiced by Jason Donovan in the English versions, is kind of annoying. He is meant to be, but over time his wisecracking jokes and bouncy personality can rub you up the wrong way.

The controllers are still a big part of why the game works. There are many different quiz games available today but most of them use your phone as a controller and involve downloading apps which keeps the cost down and makes it fairly easy for other members to join in, but it’s definitely not as immersive as a special controller with a big red button.

A game of Buzz has a variety of different rounds, it’s all answering questions as you would expect in a quiz game, but the way points are spread out is different in each round. One complaint I hear a lot is that too many of the rounds are based around the speed at which you can read the question and press the button, which is unfair if you are trying to bring in older members of the family.

As is usually the story with PlayStation 3 games today, the online modes do not work. Online play used to let you compete with other people but more interestingly you could create your own quizzes and share them online. Although in reality, the player-made quizzes were quite limited and very hit and miss on quality and I don’t think the game suffers from the lack of them today. There is also a “Share to Facebook” button which does not work and is just kind of funny.

Buzz: Quiz TV itself contains over 6000 questions with other games having similar numbers, which is a lot but these are split into different categories, so if you favor the same categories over and over, it usually isn’t that long until you see a few repeat questions, it very much depends how much and how often you play the games.

Some of the questions really do date the game. It can be like playing a game of Trivial Pursuit from the 1960’s you found in your Grandma’s attic. I played a whole round of questions where the category was “The Future” and it talked about the London Olympic Games, questions about electric cars and even one bizarre question asking me what day of the week Christmas Day would be in the far, far future of 2010. Other questions surrounding celebrities and music also feel very “of it’s time”, and that isn’t too bad for those of us who lived through that time, mentally you can recontextualize the category of “Modern Music” to “History”. But if you are trying to involve younger players, they won’t enjoy those as much.

There are other things that I don’t love about the games either. I think certain aspects of the TV show idea just get very frustrating and repetitive when you see them again and again. The music, the jokes, the animations, the intros, all very powerful on that first few playthrough but they grind on you after time, it’s like you start to see behind the curtain and the illusion is broken. I also would have liked more variety in the number of different rounds and better options for configuring that. Characters and unlockables would also have helped give the game better structure and purpose. But quiz games aren’t to everyone’s tastes and this does a pretty good job of being that family-facing good bit of fun.

In an interview in 2010 the developers, Relentless Software, suggested that the sales figures for the PlayStation 3 titles were not as strong as they were on the PlayStation 2, but sadly the PlayStation 3 didn’t take off in the same way and really struggled to move units early on. It wouldn’t be until after the Buzz games were stopped that the PlayStation 3 found it’s second wind and started to get better sales figures. I don’t think any modern quiz games have quite captured the completeness that Buzz offered. The controllers, the variety in rounds, the family-friendly approach and the overall polish is just missing from a lot of the newer quiz games.