PS2 Party Game Roundup Review

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Buzz! Junior: Monster Rumble

Unlike most other games in the Buzz! series, Monster Rumble is a collection of mini-games rather than a quiz. As the title suggests, it's aimed at the younger end of the market and has a spooky theme. Spooky in a Disney/Pixar rather than a survival horror way, so expect more brightly coloured cartoon characters and less nurses with no faces.

The game's visual style is highly appealing. Cut-scenes are of a high quality, and players have a variety of fun options to customise their monsters. The stupid Australian from the quiz game is gone, and replaced by a much less irritating and insulting mad professor-type. The set-up is similar to the quiz games - you can choose the length of the game, the rounds you want to play, the difficulty level and so on.

But once things get underway you're competing to win mini-games rather than answer questions. As you'd expect some of the games are more fun than others, but overall they're of a good standard, simple to pick-up-and-play and nicely balanced.

The character design strikes a nice balance between cute and horrible.

Some mini-games are plain old button-bashers, like the one where you have to hammer the buzzer to smash up pumpkins. Others rely on quick reactions, such as the shooting range game where you have to shoot coloured monsters using the relevant buttons. There's also a simple golf game where you time your shot using the buzzer and a racing game where you're running down a sewer on a barrel, amongst plenty others.

Monster Rumble doesn't quite match the quirky charm of Wario Ware or the challenge of Big Brain Academy. However, the style of the game should still appeal to kids. The rounds are varied and entertaining enough to appeal to adults, too, or drunk ones anyway. There might be better post-pub games out there, but Monster Rumble strikes a good balance if you're also looking for a game kids can also enjoy.

7/10

SingStar Bollywood

What on earth has happened to SingStar PS3? Has Sony run out of disc labels? Who knows when it'll turn up, but at least they're still churning out PS2 instalments in the meantime. The latest of these is SingStar Bollywood, which features 36 songs from Hindi-language movie musicals.

The drill will be familiar if you've played SingStar before. You sing into a microphone and score points according to how well you perform. There are solo, pass the mic, duet and battle modes to choose from. SingStar Bollywood doesn't muck about with the formula one bit.

Lyrics are displayed phonetically, but we're still rubbish at singing them.

So the question of how much appeal it holds, as with all the SingStar spin-offs, comes down to the track listing. You can view this for yourself on Wikipedia - yes, we checked it's accurate. Eurogamer's knowledge of Bollywood is entirely lacking, so we asked a friend whose isn't for their thoughts.

"The tracks are all hits from modern Bollywood classics, from this decade and the '90s. Not all of the songs are great, but some of them are modern classics," he said, citing Nazar Ke Samne from the film Aashiqui as a highlight.

"The list could have been better; it could have contained songs that are far better and more memorable," Our chum went on. "Some of these songs are not that famous."

It's a criticism which could be levelled at most instalments in the SingStar series. None of them feature a dream tracklist where every song is a winner. But they're all slick, polished and great fun if you're a karaoke fan. SingStar Bollywood is no exception - assuming, of course, you're also a Bollywood fan.

7/10