The Buzz! franchise has finally come to PS3 this year, in the ultimate package of Buzz! Quiz TV, which innovates online play and downloadable questions, refining what the original PS2 entries set out to achieve, thus making it the true evolution of the series. But there is another Sony platform that hasn't got a piece of the Buzz! action yet; Master Quiz hopes to rectify this, bringing Buzz, voiced by Jason Donovan, to the handheld for the first time. The question is, can it keep up to the high pedigree of its console siblings?

If Master Quiz were to be judged purely as a handheld quiz game then it is the best example you can find to date. There's a decent amount of questions and plenty of modes to play, all presented with a high level of polish. Your quizmaster Buzz may be made up of far less polygons than on PS3, but he looks on par with the first game. The questions are voiced excellently, while the pictures and videos that accompany them are easy to interpret. This game is so slick in design that it's comparable to the Touch Generations titles on the DS. The simple layouts and clear but good-looking menus rank Quiz Master above most casual games on the PSP in this field, a quality that can be seen in the structure of the game itself as well.

The single player option is a departure from the basic mode that's normally available in Buzz!, featuring a set of fifteen quiz challenges for you to complete. These can last between one and five minutes, which means they're ideal for the pick up and play nature of a quiz as well as gaming on the go. Each of these is based on one of the six different modes in the game, arranged in a pattern that makes you play three challenges to unlock the next set. This works well as an introduction to the game, educating you on each discipline while also willing you to score higher points in a round to unlock medals and special trophies, which sadly cannot be transferred to your PSN ID. The Solo Challenge mode is an interesting addition but it replaces the ability to play a full solo quiz game. This is probably due to repetition in the questions making the multiplayer less enjoyable, but it really should have been included.

The place to be in Buzz though is the multiplayer and, surprisingly, Master Quiz offers three different ways to play with up to six friends. The best option is to game share with another console, which allows the game to be much faster-paced and intuitive, while the other options only require one PSP. Pass Around is self-explanatory, while Quiz Host allows one person to keep the system and ask the questions themselves. The first of these modes is the slowest option, as you have to pass to the next player after every question, which brings the game to a halt if you have more than two people playing. There will sometimes be a round where one or two people don't actually answer any questions, thanks to the fact that you have to answer every question individually.

This brings me to the reason why the score for Master Quiz is lower than the first few paragraphs would have led you to believe. Buzz! is all about the buzzers. The best moments in a heated game are when you beat the leader to the buzz by milliseconds, only to get a question that you have no idea what the answer might be. The ability to all try and answer a question is the best part about Buzz!, so Master Quiz just feels wrong. The face buttons replace the colours on the buzzer but the game still displays the answers in a block, meaning that you'll press the wrong button a lot, especially if you are a casual gamer, the main audience of Buzz! in the first place. This began to annoy me early on and soon it became too frustrating when trying to get some of the elusive trophies.

Buzz! Master Quiz is an exceptionally well-produced game. The presentation is immaculate, and it looks and feels like Buzz! on the surface. The only problem is that this isn't a Buzz! game; without the buzzers, it feels tedious in multiplayer, which is the death for a multiplayer-based game. Master Quiz just proves that the PSP and Buzz! don't mix, which is a real shame. It's hard to see such a brilliantly executed game fall on its face when it matters most but there's no denying that the game just doesn't feel quite right. Playing this instead of the console iterations is a bad decision, as Master Quiz fails to deliver the small intricacies that make Buzz! the party classic that it is. Disappointing for fans of the series, but with Quiz TV available, they already have a way to feed their competitive nature.

Reviewed by Sam Atkins for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).