I spent the night playing a trivia game on the PS2 and even though I'd like to think I know a lot of trivia, Buzz! makes me feel really stupid. I blame the snarky host.
Buzz! comes with a buzzer-type peripheral, which makes playing the game feel like you're on an actual talk show host. Some of the rounds require you to press the colored buttons on the peripheral that match the correct answer before your opponents while others require you to press the buttons in a specific order. Don't worry if your brain isn't full of useless facts though, because there are some rounds that just require luck or a quick trigger finger.
The trivia questions come from a variety of categories ranging from geography to television, which evens the game out a little. The entertainment questions cater to people who know more about pop culture while the geography and history questions are definitely for the more bookish types. Some may even say the game is educational.
Did you know that Rin Tin Tin came before Lassie? I didn't.
Aside from the entertaining facts you gain from playing the game, the character customization is good for a few laughs. My opponent was able to pick out a character who was a pretty good video-game likeness of himself if I do say so myself. I sprung for the Mexican wrestler with the pink wrestling mask. Players can also assign different sounds to their buzzer so if you want the game to produce a "Moooo" whenever you press your buzzer, you can.
I liked the trivia and button-pressing aspects of Buzz! but the game also had a few annoyances, the main one being the host who is also named Buzz. The host would be half as annoying if he didn't have that bad accent and he would be even less annoying if he wasn't so snarky with comments all the time. Half of the time I spent in the game was spent listening to his tiresome remarks. The host is certainly no Alex Trebek.
The other thing I didn't like about the game is the quiz where you're required to answer questions based on listening to a song. Probably because of licensing issues, none of the songs are the original songs so it makes it difficult to even figure out what song is playing. I guess that's part of the challenge, but I would have rather them leave out those rounds altogether. It's quizzes like that that makes me glad there's an option to play only quizzes that you choose from a list.
Buzz does a good job of emulating a television game show and I admit that half of the fun is getting the buzzer to play with. I would have liked the game more if the host's chatter could be skipped, but other than that, it's a decent quiz game.
