Buzz! A Five Star Hollywood Extravaganza

If you've been to the main page of this blog, you no doubt have seen the mini game and video trailer of Buzz! The Hollywood Quiz, a new trivia game for the Playstation 2 that uses the same controllers as Buzz! The Mega Quiz, Buzz! Junior Robo Jam, and Buzz! Jungle Party. Seeing from past posts on this Blog-o-rama that I loved movies, the marketing firm for Buzz! asked me to test the game and to post a review. Since I love trivia games, I was only too happy to try it out.

Up to eight players can play Buzz!, and the more players, the more fun. It's a great game to play when you are having guests at the house. And what is really great about it, any age will have a great time playing, whether they are 12 years old (as is my son, who almost beat me), to 80 (as is my mother-in-law who provided a lot of laughs as she actually finished in second place in our game of six players).

If you are by yourself, you can play what can only be described as a challenging and fast single player mode. The most fun of course, comes with groups of people competing against one another.

Their are eight rounds in the multiplayer mode, and each one can be a challenge. They consist of:

1. HOLLYWOOD STARS - Each contestant chooses their favorite subject and then answers trivia tailored to that category.
2. FASTEST FINGER - A photo reveals the answer to a question. The quicker you buzz, the more points you win.
3. FACT OR FICTION - You have to decide whether the story you have just heard is fact or fiction.
4. TOP RANK - This round gives you four answers that you must put in order to win points with the correct answer.
5. PIE FIGHT - This was a funny round. The player that answers the question correctly first gets to throw a pie at another contestant. Too many pies in the face eliminates you from this round. But BEWARE! Even though I kept answering the questions correctly first, I kept throwing the pies in my own face and ended up losing the round.
6. ROLLOVER - This round could earn you a lot of points if the other players miss their questions as the points rollover into a pot if they miss their question. Unfortunately, in the times that I played, the other players, like myself, knew all of their answers and there were no points to pull ahead from the other players. During this round our scores increased by the same amount.
7. POINT STEALER - This is the round where you can definitely pull ahead. Answer the question first and correctly and the points you earn are stolen from another player.
8. THE FINAL COUNTDOWN - This is, of course, the final round of the game. All of your points that you have earned are turned into a time bar. As the round progresses, each players bar begins to shrink. The countdown temporarily halts when you answer a question correctly. If you are the fastest player to correctly answer, you are give a time bonus. A wrong answer knocks off a big chunk of time. The round ends when there is only one player with time left.

At the end of the game trophies and prizes are awarded. I won't reveal them here as that would spoil part of the fun.

Overall, this is a really fun game and the controllers are a part of that fun. I kept imagining myself using one of those buzzers you see in the contestants hands on Jeopardy. The graphics, characters (you yourself can chose from 14 different contestants), and sound were all first rate. I hadn't played any videogames in a while and was surprised by the high quality of this game.

An added bonus is that if you have an EyeToy USB Camera, you can set it up for your face to appear in shame if you miss a question. There is also a mode where you become the quizzmaster.

All in all, Buzz! The Hollywood Quiz is a great night (or day) of fast, fun, entertaining trivia. It receives "riesen2b's blog-o-rama's five star recommendation! *****of five.