Buzz! The Hollywood Quiz review

We here at GamesRadar believe that Rock Band is the finest multiplayer game on the planet. However, Buzz! Hollwood Quiz might very well be the best party game on the planet. It's instantly understandable. It supports a whopping eight players. There are 5000 questions, which should last you awhile. The subject matter is movies - possibly the most accessible subject on Earth - and the controllers have exactly five huge buttons, each of which is a different color to correspond with the possible answers onscreen. There simply does not exist a game with broader appeal, and there are very few that are easier to play.

It's also really fun, at least with a crowd. For one or two players, it might drag, but with a group of four or more, it's a blast. The main gameplay modes are still presented like a really slow-moving game show, with a tragically unfunny host and spokesmodel-cheerful hostess guiding your goofy-looking character (Elvis impersonator, Bride of Frankenstein, Rambo look-alike, etc) through various challenges. Sometimes you'll select true or false, sometimes you'll rank things in alphabetical or chronological order, sometimes it's a race to see who can identify a picture or just pick the right answer. And once in awhile you get to throw a pie at someone.

We have to say, we have no patience for the game show trappings, which are cute for exactly ten minutes and become increasingly annoying every moment thereafter. They just slow things down too much. It bugged us with the previous game (Buzz! The Mega Quiz), and it bugs us now. However, there's also a rapid-fire, "Quickfire Quiz" mode that simply machine-guns 10 to 100 questions at you. Much better!

We're sure someone works very hard on this guy, but the less we see of him, the better.

Quickfire Quiz mode is the main reason we've rated Hollywood Quiz a point higher than its predecessor. Another is the QuizMaster mode, which tags one person as the boss and enables that person to ask his or her own questions. There's also EyeToy support so it can snap a picture of your slack-jawed face when you fail a question, but we're not terribly interested in that bit.

Buzz! The Hollywood Quiz is about the furthest thing from a hardcore game (though it's very, very similar to Xbox 360's Scene It!), but it's nonetheless a great purchase for those who like a good casual contest now and then. If you like, you can even try it out for free - sort of. Head over to http://www.buzzthegame.com/en_GB/index.html, and click on "Play Quiz". You'll get a quick, fancy controller-less taste of what Buzz has to offer. Speaking of which, Buzz only comes with four controllers, so you'll need to buy another game from the fine Buzz lineup (there are currently four in the series in the US) to get another set of four "buzzers". But if you like keeping a roomful of people shouting at the TV, it's not a bad investment at all.