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BUZZ! Quiz World is the latest iteration of the Sony-exclusive trivia challenge party game series. Coming with 4 wireless BUZZ! controllers players of all types are encouraged to get right in to the experience and feel the pressure as they face off against friends for the ultimate quiz crown. With a whole Blu-Ray disc full of questions and a near infinite supply of user generated-content with MyBUZZ! online, BUZZ! Quiz World is set to keep that buzzer finger charged.

What makes BUZZ! a unique experience from the start is it’s unique wireless controllers. Outfitted with a large red buzzer up top that illuminates appropriately holding the controller does feel like something right out of a game show. The construction of each buzzer feels relatively sound, and once batteries are loaded (not included in the box) it feels appropriately weighted. Sometimes the face buttons for selecting answers or navigating menus can feel very plastic and cheap but never get in the way of play.

Wireless connectivity is not handled naively through the Playstation 3, but instead requires a small black USB dongle to sync the 4 controllers to the system. Connecting is very simple, once everything is plugged in you just push a slider on the side of the controller and it connects, sometimes. During the review period there were multiple instances of controllers simply refusing to connect but once synced there were none of the dropped connections that can be found with some other Bluetooth devices.

In an effort to personalize the game slightly more, players are now able scroll through a list of names and choose theirs for their profile allowing the host of the show to call everyone by their real names. This is a great concept and sounds like a perfect way to eliminate the break in disbelief caused by calling everyone Player N. However, because the list is a predetermined set all those sad kids who could never find their name printed on a coffee mug or keychain will feel the sting of odd name rejection once more. BUZZ! attempts to remedy this with the inclusion of fun nicknames, but especially in a multicultural place like Canada players will be left disappointed and settle for being called Flash or Twinkletoes.

The actual implementation of the name audio isn’t terrible, but it’s not great either. Rather than recording a unique line of dialogue for each name BUZZ! Quiz World does the usual chopped up soundbite approach and can be rather obvious at times. This causes a weird discontinuity and pulls the player in to believing the experience and then shatters it over and over. On purely a mechanical basis this feature does a very good job of simplifying what can otherwise be a confusing experience for non-players.

Customizing each player profile doesn’t end with just a name though. Users can also select a unique buzzer noise and one of a dozen or so characters to represent them in-game. For guys there’s a wide variety to choose from; knights, luchadores, and even superheroes. For girls the options are a little more simplified; a kindly old lady, or one of three slutty looking professionals. While definitely not a game breaker it would have been nice to see the obviously male-centric art team focus more on providing some truly unique character options other than big-breasted cheerleader or big-breasted nurse.

The main mode of the game, a completely customizable game show enactment pits players against each other in a series of knowledge based challenges. There are over 5,000 new questions in the game and they’re sorted in to specialty sets. The game gives underdogs the chance to choose the types of questions, which really helps even things out. The different stages of a single game provide different scoring systems for answering the questions, but ultimately all boil down to some combination of answer fast and answer correctly.

Host of the show, Buzz, has some rather funny moments but content-wise the experience feels a little soulless. Player-characters run through the same set of victory and defeat animations with very little happening with the backdrops, making the experience a bit of a bore to look at. That’s not to say that the visuals aren’t well produced, the stylized look of the show gives a friendly appeal and looks flashy in HD, it’s just that despite the exciting look the lack of activity dulls it’s shine significantly.

But as a trivia game, the focus is naturally not on the aesthetics but on the actual questions themselves. BUZZ! Quiz World offers a wide assortment of topics and includes picture and video content for less than 20% of the questions, surprisingly little considering the Blu-Ray format of the disc. The questions are moderately paced but give topic specialists a rather easy time, an important feature when considering that the underdog usually picks.

There are a few annoying features that come out of using the BUZZ! controllers as the only form of input during the game. For example, there appears to be no way to pause the game or access options, meaning that if anyone in your party of four wants to grab a drink Player 1 has to grab the Dualshock 3 and hit the home button to stop the game. Also, because the controllers have no directional pad players must get used to navigating menus with colour coordinated button presses. It would have been nice to simultaneously support a regular controller, or slap a few extra buttons on the side of the buzzers.

One of the coolest features in the game is the new MyBUZZ! section which lets you download user created questions that have been uploaded through the game’s web portal. Obviously the quality of the content varies greatly, but it’s a great alternative to buying new question packs when you’re looking for more quizzes. The section is well laid out, if a little hidden in the menus, and does a good job of bringing fresh content to the player in search of it.

Another new feature to Quiz World is the inclusion of an 8-player Sofa vs Sofa mode that will let you face off against friends or random people online through the Playstation Network. With cool features like the ability to send pictures of your smack-down face using the Playstation Eye this is the most fun mode in the game. It should come to nobody’s surprise though that this is also the mode that gets the least play, as it requires not one, but two groups of people to be up to the challenge. Of course you can always just hop on and find some strangers, but everyone knows that it’s always more fun with friends.

Having said that, BUZZ! Quiz World is not a single player game. You can play by yourself in one of two challenge modes, but with no AI opponents the game simply boils down to a rather lonely experience of answering valueless questions until you fail. There is very little reason to play alone unless you want to get ready for a later game with others and the whole experience by yourself is void of all the excitement that comes from beating your friends.

BUZZ! Quiz World is a good attempt at a trivia game, and does provide a good set of questions to answer. What it fails at though is creating a cohesive and enjoyable experience to wrap around those questions. There are just so many little minuses to the game that it really can detract from the fun. It’s not a terrible game, but BUZZ! Quiz World is definitely not a game you should consider lightly; this game is only for big trivia fans who will have a lot of people over to play with. For everyone else, there’s really nothing this game adds to a regular paper-based trivia game.

BUZZ! Quiz World is available exclusively on Playstation 3.