A good game of trivia is capable of separating the strong minds from the weak. It can boost the intellectual egos of the victors, and it can force shame upon those who fail. Thankfully, Buzz! The Hollywood Quiz isn’t one of these games.

There’s nothing better than sitting around the living room, enjoying an evening with friends, and ridiculing your gaming counterparts. Buzz! creates a fantastic trivia environment, where testing your film knowledge becomes less of an exam and more of a party. Nothing beats throwing virtual pies at the face of your buddy after he joked about your cinematic incompetence.

Frankly, it doesn’t matter whether you consider yourself a movie buff. Games like Buzz! are not centered on successful gameplay. If you have friends with whom you can play, this game is for you. It’s hard to imagine a gaming scenario that provokes more enjoyment than an exciting 4-person battle royale for movie trivia supremacy.

Even though you may not know it, this game has your name written on it. Find out exactly why after the jump.

Rose, the lovely assistant, hardly talks at all. Instead, her job is to explain the rules of each round in the game. With only five buttons on the controller, you wouldn’t think there could be much confusion as to how to play the game. But if you ignore Rose’s explanations, you may quickly find yourself nervously fumbling with your controller, losing chunks of points. 

The controller itself is about as simple as they come. Five colored buttons sit beneath a giant red buzzer on this one-handed peripheral. Although the controller technically offers fewer controls than a standard game pad, Buzz! utilizes an interface that intuitively leads you throughout the game. And just in case you manage to become confused, Rose pops in from time to time to guide you through the game’s menus.

Before you begin any of the game’s modes, you’ll have the option of choosing your avatar. If you like, you can skip this selection and get right to the game. But frankly, what fun would that be? The Hollywood Quiz offers you a handful of characters to choose from, each with three different outfits. Although this may not seem like much, the game only supports up to eight players, so there are more than enough options to go around. You’ll also be able to customize your buzzer sound, choosing from a list of dozens of audio annoyances.

Buzz! offers a few standard game types, none of which will surprise you. New to The Hollywood Quiz is a single player mode. If you are playing alone, you can test yourself through two rounds of trivia goodness. But that’s just the problem: there are only two rounds. It takes a whopping ten minutes to play through a single player quiz, totaling around 15-20 questions. To be honest, it’s boring. The game is too short, you miss out on all the game modes that are offered in multiplayer quizzes, and it’s just no fun to play trivia by yourself.

Thankfully, the multiplayer game modes offered in Buzz! are a blast. You’ll play standard rounds, consisting of average questions asked to all the players involved, and you’ll play modes in which you’re able to steal your opponents’ points and peg them in the face with pies. The questions themselves can be entertaining, but the real fun here is the interaction with your opponents. It feels great to have the opportunity to steal points from your fellow quiz takers. Likewise, it’s dreadfully painful to watch your hard-earned points slip into the grasp of another player. 

This time around, Buzz! doesn’t force you to play its created set of 5,000 questions. If you have a big group of players, and you want to play your own brand of trivia, you can switch over to the Quizmaster game mode. Here, one player is branded as, you guessed it, the quizmaster. This player acts as the mediator, asking their own questions, and judging which of the other players has answered correctly. It’s a great way to add to the options at your disposal, but it feels very open-ended, with little regulation performed by the game itself. Ultimately, this game mode only works well with a very large group. But when there are enough players, Quizmaster can offer an extremely varied and exciting gaming session.

Overall, the graphics in The Hollywood Quiz will not awe anyone. The game uses a fun, cartoon-like art style, coupled with a vibrant and lively color palette. When this is paired Buzz, the over-the-top host, it delivers an aura of a cheesy ‘80s game show. 

There are, however, some downsides to Buzz! You’ll encounter plenty of jagged lines along the way. But frankly, they aren’t much of a bother, since the majority of your attention will be devoted to ousting your fellow contestants. Also, while we were getting our trivia on, we encountered a few instances of freezing. Thankfully, this never happened during a game, as they were relegated to post-cinematic occurrences. Nonetheless, they were a bit of a nuisance. We also ran into a case of muted speech during a game. While the game was still playable, since all clues and questions are delivered in written form as well as being read by Buzz, it took away a big chunk of the experience. Luckily, this was only a one-time occurrence.

In the end, the few negative points surrounding Buzz! The Hollywood Quiz are negligible. The true joy and revelry here comes from the interactions you’ll experience with your friends as you battle to take the title of “Trivia Champion.” There are few games that can create an enjoyable atmosphere among a large group of friends, and Buzz! nails it. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better game for uniting both your gaming and non-gaming friends around a single television screen. And when the game weighs in at a mere $40 (including four controllers; $30 without the controllers), it’s difficult to ignore. If you’re looking for a great party game, a first-class trivia game, or just a fantastic casual game, The Hollywood Quiz is a can’t-miss opportunity.

Final Score: B+

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