What an extraordinarily large bird.
Your guide through TalkMan is a companion called Max. Max is the overly enthusiastic interpretator who basically guides you through everything that TalkMan has to offer. The main mode of the game is 'Talk Mode'. It's here that you select your language (and gender), as well as the gender and language of the person you're trying to talk too. You then choose a scenario, such as airport, shopping or the internet. Once this is done you speak into the microphone what you want to ask, and Max will try to identify what you're saying, before translating your speech into the other language. It all sounds very appealing, but alas the game only includes 3,000 phrases, so if you say something that doesn't match up then you'll need to settle for "close enough".
But this isn't the only problem with Talk mode. Every time you say a phrase, TalkMan seems to pause and load whilst getting ready to translate the speech. This makes the whole process rather annoying because if you do happen to be talking to another person they will quite possibly become rather confused about what is happening. You also need to make sure you're in the correct scenario to ask certain questions, so the game isn't as easy to grasp as we'd hoped.
'Game Mode' could have been the saving grace for the title, but unfortunately the games just aren't that much fun. The first game is a pronounciation game, with the objective to read out some of the speech in the correct pronounciation, after which you'll be given a grade ranging from A to D. Japanese text is written in Kanji form, so if you're not familiar with Kanji then you won't be successful in the pronounciation game for Japanese. The technology doesn't appear to be correct either though. When playing through the pronounciation game using English i was actually graded D a few times when saying words perfectly, which makes the game very inaccurate. It also makes you wonder how well you're pronouncing the other sentences in the other languages.
Please don't wink at me, it's disconcerting...
The second game is the listening game. The listening game is even worse because Max reads out five foreign phrases with a translation. You are then asked to identify one of them and some birds will hold up a sign, letting you know if you're correct or not. The whole process isn't seamless though because you need to wait for the UMD to load after every phrase, so it's unlikely you'll have the patience to stick with this game. It is also possible to unlock two more minigames if you get A grades in the listening game, but we question how many people will actually stick with the listening game for that long.
The game also includes a few little extras that seem to be thrown in to make the game a little deeper. For example, it's possible to take a voice memo as well as keep track of the people you meet. You can record each person's voice and place a flag on a map of the world so you know where they're from. The map isn't very detailed so the voice memo is essential. The game also includes a unit converter which is actually pretty handy and converts measurements like length and currency. The currency convertor in particular could come in rather handy if you're travelling around a lot, although it would have been appreciated if you could connect via infrastructure mode to get the latest currency exchange rates.
The last feature to be included is the alarm clock. The alarm clock isn't a major feature thankfully but you're not going to want to use it because when the alarm goes off you need to say a foreign phrase and the alarm will keep going (and going and going...) until you say the foreign phrase correctly. This is extraordinarily annoying because in the mornings I have enough trouble speaking English, let alone a phrase in Spanish. If you picked this game up you may want to learn the language but this is taking it a bit far.
The holiday setting.
Despite the potential then, TalkMan just isn't as successful as some of the other titles released that include extra peripherals. In terms of a game, there really isn't much content here and the actual translating is so inaccurate that even as a travel companion it's not an essential purchase. The slow loading also means the whole process is stagnant and the person you're trying to communicate with is likely to just get annoyed or confused. The game mode is boring and the two mini games don't really help you to memorise the phrases at all. A few travellers may get a bit of benefit out of TalkMan, but it's certainly not going to replace the more traditional, far cheaper option: a phrasebook.
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