Buzz! Quiz Master Hands-On

Buzz! is just one part of Sony's social games offensive--a series of incredibly successful games that include the EyeToy and SingStar series. Sony's David Reeves announced today that Buzz! was the least successful of the three franchises, but with 6 million total sales to date, it's still a jewel in the crown of Sony's European development. It's not surprising to see the game finally make the move to the PlayStation Portable, but Buzz! Quiz Master is actually going to be the biggest game in the series to date, with some 3,000 questions in total. We grabbed a PSP at the PlayStation Day press event in London and challenged Sony Europe to a quick test of general knowledge.

Buzz! doesn't seem to have lost any of its charm in the move to the PSP. It's still fronted by the host, Buzz, who once again is voiced by former Neighbours actor Jason Donovan. It also features all the usual rounds, from the Quickfire quiz to Pass the Bomb, while 900 of its 3,000 questions will feature photo or video elements. The question set is based around general knowledge, hence the "Master Quiz" title, and will cover such subjects as film, music, sport, and TV. In our first round, we encountered questions on cricket, the TV series Lost, and the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, so it will certainly keep you on your toes. The single-player structure means that you have to score a bronze, silver, or gold medal to unlock new rounds, and the round we played reminded us of an old TV show called Catchphrase. With each successively correct answer, we could reveal squares on an image, until we got to the point where we could take a guess at what was underneath. It's a new round for the Buzz! series, and we liked what we saw.

Perhaps the best part of the package, though, is the multiplayer aspect, which you will be able to play by passing around a single PSP or enabling the console's wireless game sharing. We played one of the passing modes with a few other attendees at the PlayStation event, and we have to say we enjoyed its emphasis on being as mean as possible to the other players. The idea of the game is to take control of the PSP when prompted and select a portion of an image about which the next person must answer question. For example, given a picture of Lance Armstrong, we decided to obscure all of his face apart from his lips, and the next person had to identify him based only on a cycling question. Other wireless multiplayer games are promised too--Pass the Bomb means passing the console around players to avoid having a bomb explode during your turn, while Quiz Host allows one player to choose the game modes while up to six others play the quiz.

In addition to passing the PSP around among friends, you'll also be able to beam a "fastest finger" quiz round demo to other PSP owners using the wireless game sharing mode. All of the familiar Buzz! characters have been shrunk down for the PlayStation Portable version, including the Pelvis character that we chose who looks conspicuously like a fat Elvis. The game is coming along nicely, and apart from some load times that seem a bit long at this point, Buzz! Quiz Master looks fairly close to completion. It's due for release in July but only in Europe, so worldwide quiz fans will have to import the game and put up with the cricket questions.