Heck, we can see it: your backpack's on fire while you're dashing down the wrong platform to catch a train that has departed 15 minutes ago - from another station. It's clear, if all hell breaks loose - Talkman might not be the tool of choice in any situation that involves communication. Although pressing up/left buttons and triangle/circle/L/R at the same time triggers an Emergency Alarm, spoken (or rather, yelled) in the language chosen for conversations. Despite a bit of loading time to get into Talk mode, once you are familiar with how it works you should be quick to initiate and keep a (basic) conversation going. 



After that reassuring disclaimer, you are greeted with a FMV sporting the first appearance of your host, a blue Dodo-like bird called MAX. His character design might be simple, but we came to like the winged fellow a lot while writing this review. There are lots of different animations he flings at you, while he goes through the motions of helping you out translating or as a tutor in Game mode. Depending on your chosen language for Talkman, Max also has several costumes to show off. Then it was time to test the microphone and speech recognition before you start, where you're asked to say "Hello" (English setting) into the MIC, followed by either "BAD!" or "GOOD!" remarks, depending on whether the test was successful.