Buzz Quiz TV
SonyPlayStation 3
He's baaaaaaccck.
Gaming's cheesiest virtual host enters the new generation and it's like he's never been away.
If you haven't played Buzz yet you really should take a long hard look at yourself.
The quiz-based games, exclusively for the PlayStation 2 for the past three years, feature nifty controllers and are some of the best party games available.
The eponymous host is Buzz, a Jason Donovan-voiced greaseball who is more annoying than Jason Gunn and Dominic Bowden combined but has better jokes.
There have been a handful of enjoyable but samey Buzz titles for the old PS2, and this is the first time it's hit the PS3.
Changes? A few, though not so many it doesn't look, feel and play like the Buzz game you're so familiar with.
The most interesting addition is user-generated content.
Drop by the Buzz website, create your own quiz and within minutes - once it's been screened for offensive content and that sort of stuff - you can be testing your friends.
There is also an online option for the first time.
Questions? About 5000, divided into music, movies and television, general knowledge, sports and lifestyle.
Many of the game modes return, including Point Stealer (guaranteed to cause living-room arguments) and Pass The Bomb (as pointlessly random as ever).
There is a neat new finish called Final Countdown where the contestants stand on platforms that are sinking towards the floor.
Enough right answers and you raise up; a few wrong ones and you plummet through a trapdoor.
The PS3 version of Buzz features all-new wireless controllers, which I'm sure are great but I didn't get sent any.
Happily, the old wired controllers are supported.
Nothing about Buzz Quiz TV is screamingly innovative or fresh.
But it's such a fun game to play and it deserves a place in your gaming library.
Sony
PlayStation 2
What's the definition of pointless? Reviewing a Singstar game.
Everyone's played it, everyone knows what to do and everyone knows that if you sing falsetto you stand a better chance of scoring points.
Better to just pick out some of the highlights on the tracklist. Amped features: Four Non Blondes - What's Up.
For those of us who were teenagers in the early-1990s.
David Bowie - Changes.
He didn't just write it for Shrek 2, you know.
Quiet Riot - Cum On Feel The Noise.
Now we're talking.
Soul Asylum - Runaway Train.
One of the most under-appreciated bands of our time.
Kasabian - LSF.
Just one of dozens of Singstar songs I've never even heard before.
Sony
PlayStation Portable
For one of the few times in my gaming career, I'm stumped.
I don't know whether I like Echochrome or hate it.
I'm not sure whether to give it five stars or one.
I don't know what genre it fits into, or to whom I should be recommending the game.
I don't even know what Echochrome MEANS.
With no instructions, I was flying blind when I slotted the disc into my PSP.
And in many ways, I still don't have a clue what I'm doing.
It's a puzzle-based game that features monochromatic 3D shapes - mainly stairs and blocks and the like - and stick figures walking around.
The aim is to manipulate the view of the shapes to get the tiny characters from point A to point B.
Simple, eh? Except it's not.
You can't shift the shapes; you can only change their perspective.
Perspective is at the heart of the whole game.
An example: Tiny figure needs to walk from one block to another block.
But there's a dirty great gap in the way.
Change the perspective to make it LOOK like another block is in the middle.
He walks across.
I can't explain it any more tidily than that.
Echochrome is a brain teaser for the Mensa generation, a symphony of optical illusions that will have your head exploding within minutes.
Interesting, weird, challenging.
Ideally suited to the handheld console, but not the sort of thing your average teenager will beg to play.
