(continued from previous page) ...answer. This can make for some very competitive play, especially since it comes right before the Final Round. This makes for some great gameplay, and can have a huge effect on the standings of the game.

For the Final Round, all players’ points are converted to a “time bar.” Depending on the number of points you received throughout the game, your time bar could be very long, or pathetically short. During the round, each player’s time goes down after a question is asked until they give their answer. The first person to get a correct answer gets extra time, correct answers after this simply have their time stopped, and anyone who answers incorrectly loses time. This is another last man standing round, and play continues until only one contestant is left standing. Throughout the round, our good friend and host Buzz periodically dials up the speed to ensure that someone gets to watch their quiz career circle the bowl. The winner of the round wins the game.

After a multiplayer game, the lovely assistant Rose hands out prizes and awards. Awards are given for most correct answers, fastest average answer speed, and a dummy prize for the player who got the most answers wrong.

Single player is a completely different beast from its multiplayer brethren. There are only 2 rounds, and the method of play is reversed. The first round, Time Builder, gives players 10 separate questions to answer. Each correct answer awards the player time on the clock for the next round, depending on how quickly they answered. After all 10 questions are answered, players move on to the Hotseat round. During this round, players continue answering questions until their time runs out.

Scoring is unique in this round, as each consecutive right answer will award more points for the next right answer, up to a maximum of 2500 points for five correct answers in a row. Here is the catch: players must bank their points (by pushing the buzz button at any time) for them to be worth anything, and a wrong answer means all unbanked points are lost. At the end of the round, your score is compared to your list of high scores, so you can gauge how well you performed.

With the general principles of the game thoroughly discussed, I feel it necessary to call some attention to the questions themselves. While all of the questions are multiple choice, there is still quite a bit of difficulty in many of the quizzes. Questions are not always straightforward, either. There are music questions that require the players to identify songs without the lyrics. There are also picture questions in a few different forms.

For instance, one quandary may ask which weighs more, and show the players a picture of a penny and a contact lens. The players must then choose the correct answer. Picture questions also ask players to identify the object, presenting them with a zoomed in or out of focus picture that gets progressively better. These different types of questions keep Buzz! from becoming stale. On top of this, the game offers over 5000 questions, and if you play with a memory card, it will record the most current questions used to avoid having them come up again.

Buzz! The Mega Quiz offers something that has been quite lacking on the PS2, especially as of late. This is one of the few genuine party games out there for the system. Supporting up to 8 players for a unique and entertaining experience is almost unheard of on the PS2, and most other systems to boot. The game is not without its problems, however. For instance, the only way to pause a game is to push all four answer buttons simultaneously, a feat that is difficult to accomplish, and generally results in a wrong answer being given.

The buzzers do feel a bit cheap, and are mostly plastic, although this helps the product to be offered at the surprising price of USD 39.99 and makes the buzzers lighter for extended play periods. Finally, the single player version of the game is pretty weak, and will probably only serve a purpose to a hard-core trivia buff or for practice for multiplayer. ... (continued on next page)