7.5

aussiegamer

Talkman

Take a talking bird and chuck him into a game for the PSP that involves language. Equip the PSP with a mic and then hit the road in search of people who don’t speak your language and then trust the aforementioned bird, Max to get it right. 

Which unfortunately, he does his best but don’t entrust him with any diplomatic conferences. Max acts as the go between for you and the foreigner that you are trying to talk to and you need to make sure that you choose the right situation for him to help you out in. 

Talkman lets you select your language, the output language etc etc. You need to select the location that you are at  and what you need to achieve and Max will loosely translate what you need. He is not too bad either, however he is not bang on the money, he is simply close to saying what you need.  

Covering six languages, those being English, Japansese, German, French, Italian and Spanish, Talkman has a variety of game modes involving speech recognition that will allow you to make your way through the game by interacting with Max and listening to what he has to say in whatever language. There are several thousand phrases built into the title and you should be able to get through that particular country with only a bit of effort. 

Talkman is an interactive experience though that is for sure, despite how annoying Max is. If you are really going to use Talkman on your travels, you can even hand your PSP over to the person from that country and let them answer you in English by reversing the process that you used to ask them the question. 

Load times are a little too lengthy to really use this program actively when abroad, however it might be a great way of making new friends in pubs and clubs where English is not the first language spoken. It could even assist in romance! 

I would say that this is a title best not taken too seriously. Setting up the unit is as easy as plugging the mic into the unit then finding someone who speaks the language you want to play with. From there, it’s simply a matter of passing the PSP backward and forward. 

Ultimately this is a bit of fun. How long lived it will be remains to be seen, however I am sure that there will be other developers who finds a use for the mic so even by using this game to get used to how the mic can be used with the PSP will see you ready for other titles on the system. 

I think that gamers will treat this as a novelty and will be intrigued by the way the mic interacts with the machine and this will open the market to a whole lot of new games. Does this game have long-term appeal? Not really in my opinion, however if you go a wanderin’, then you will be sure to get this baby out and going again.