Buzz! Quiz World - PSP Review

Buzz! Quiz World! for the PSP aims to capture the same game show themed trivia fun you’d have in your home with the console versions of Buzz!, but with the added ability to take the trivia on the go with you. Buzz! is back as your host ready to quiz you (and your friends or family) with a broad variety of questions, modes, and more.

Like all Buzz! games, you’ll be given various trivia questions for you to answer. Questions are asked in accordance with each themed mode. Some modes have you looking at pictures, listening to music, or being asked your standard text questions. The questions range from moronically easy, to outright difficult and frustrating. The game boasts over 3,000 general knowledge questions, which you can expand upon by purchasing downloadable add-on packs. We tested out the video game pack priced at $2.99, which we conclude to be a must have addition to the game.

Since this is the PSP version, you wont be using the buzzers the franchise has become famous for. Instead answers are mapped out across the PSP’s face buttons, which can get a tad confusing when you are acting in haste to beat the timer. However, that will not get in the way of your enjoyment.

The game’s presentation is flawless; it’s easy to understand, it’s slick, exciting and colorful. Even more colorful is the host, Buzz’s, personality. If you’ve played other Buzz! games you’ll already know of Buzz’s zingers, although he’ll find new ways to humiliate you this time around.

Unlike most portable versions of console games, Buzz! doesn’t sacrifice any feature. In fact a it offers more in the way of variety when it comes to the modes available on the portable version, with a robust single player mode. The single player mode is a bit tedious; it’s set up like a tree, and you’ll need to answer a certain amount of questions in a certain amount of time to earn points. You’ll need points to proceed past each stop in the single player “tree”. As your reward, the single player mode gives you a chance to work toward unlocking additional characters to play as.

Where the game really shines is in it’s multiplayer modes, available in both infrastructure and ad-hoc, allowing you to play Vs. friends near and far. By far the most enjoyable would be the pass and play modes so you can see the look on your friends faces as you show them your trivia skills.

Sick of the questions the game offers? Make your own questions at MyBuzzquiz.com and play them online. Not that creative? Give someone else’s created questions a try. Sadly you cannot actually download these questions, so you’ll have to be online to play the MyBuzz quizzes, and you’ll only be able to play them in single player mode.

Buzz! busting your chops a little too much? You can take Buzz’s place as in the unique “quiz host” mode where you’ll be able to ask up to 6 of your friends questions, keep score, and ultimately deciding who out of your friends is the best at trivia.

Overall Buzz! Quiz World for the PSP does what it aims to do, it brings the same trivia with attitude you know and love from the PS3 to the PSP, so you can take it anywhere in the world you go. However the franchise is much better suited for use in a home with buzzers as the game was originally intended, something that just cannot be replicated on a portable gaming device.