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Review : Buzz! the Hollywood Quiz for PS2
For the past week or so I've been having a good time playing Buzz! the Hollywood Quiz for PlayStation 2 with my girlfriend Kymberly.
The Buzz! game series are game show quiz games build around four simple remote control button controllers that are wired into a common hub and then plugged into the PS2 via a USB cable. The big red button at the top of the controller blinks and the many wires and blinking lights were very entertaining for my cats. It bears a striking resemblance to the Big Button Controllers that Microsoft includes with Sceen It! but the Buzz! controllers came out first and does not require messing with batteries, but the mess of wires is a decent trade off. The controller ergonomics was about right and it felt like a real game show would. I've sort of wondered if a super simple would really appeal to non-gamers but it's worked it's magic with Kymberly.
The Buzz! paddle controllers were bundled with the game. The series was designed in Europe and gained a decent following.
The Buzz! quiz master character is a sort of a muppet looking semi annoying smart Aleck with big thick glasses (He remind me of Terrence and Philip from South Park). The audio dialog and graphic design of the game is very well put together.
It is pretty cool that there is still plenty of PS2 games being developed and published but there is a good market for PS2 games. There is over a hundred million PS2 systems out there and the PS3 had some PS2 backwards compatibility before it got cut in later models.
There are several titles in the series but since Kymberly is quite a Hollywood trivia buff she is very well suited to the Hollywood Quiz game. The game featured a bunch of trivia questions spanning decades of Hollywood movies. Kymberly has won every single game that we have played together. She complained a bit about how I was originally faster than her when it came to quick button pressing but her overwhelming knowledge of Hollywood minutia make her unstoppable. It is not really a game for hardcore gamers like me but it is one of the only games that she will turn on the PS2 and play on her own and want to play it with me.
Jake at May 6, 2008 
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