Phase 3: team work (infinity)
After numerous sentences have been wrong, you will soon realize that Max isn't the super interpreter that was promised. But, persevere and understand how the system works and all will be well. If Talkman is throwing up bad results, just modify a word or two in your sentence and there's a chance that Max will understand on the next attempt. For example, if you ask "Where is the best hotel to stay at?" and Max doesn't guess right, try saying "Can you recommend a good hotel". Or instead of saying "This shirt is a bit tight", say "This shirt is too small". Changes like these will vastly increase the chances of success.

There is another side to Talkman that I found myself using more than the speech recognition. By tapping the R button, a menu pops up with a list of all the conversation categories within the area you're in (hotel/airport/beach etc). From here, you can choose a category and then view all the sentences that Talkman understands. I actually found that this was a much faster method of finding the right phrase than the trial and error of using the mic. Although, using this kind of defeats the object of Talkman as the speech recognition is the main selling point.

Well, that's how this language tool works but there are a few more points to mention. After any phrase has been translated, by pressing Triangle, Talkman will switch into the language that Max is translating to, from here, the person you are conversing with can talk to Max in their own language and give you an appropriate response back in English, this is very useful. Actually, you can easily swap between all of the four languages at any time by visiting the option screen.

As useful as Talkman is, it does have one problem, loading times. From turning on your PSP and arriving at the screen where you can translate can take 90-120 seconds thanks to the various booting screens that your forced to watch. It's an embarrassing 90-120 seconds to wait, so it's probably best to keep your PSP in sleep mode and wake it up when needed.
Games
Yes, there are some games included, but there's no excitement or saving the planet, just language practice. At the start there are two games available, these are a pronunciation test and listening game. There are two other games that are unlocked later on, but I wasn't able to work out how to open them, but you might have to ace the first two games.

In the pronunciation game, there are 25 levels of increasing difficulty (and length), where Max says a phrases and all you have to do is repeat it. If you feel that you need an extra challenge, you can switch Max off and just read that text out loud with no prompting... hard but rewarding.

In the listening game, again there are 25 levels of difficulty to choose from. Max says a phrase in the foreign language your have chosen and you then have to choose (from four options) what you think the phrase means in English. My weakest part of my Japanese language skill was listening and I found that Talkman really helped me here.

On another note, the most bizarre phrase I found on Talkman is "Stop, Thief". By the time, you've booted the game up, found the phrase, chosen the right phrase from the list and waited for Max to translate, the thief is a little to far away from the PSP speakers and will not hear anything. But, I guess the real question is; do thieves actually stop when they hear someone shout this?

In conclusion, it may have a couple of design problems and I wish there were triple the number of phrases, but Talkman is a valuable tool if you are traveling to Japan, China or Korea with little or no language skills. When on holiday in these countries, Max can help you out in most situations, especially in an emergency; Talkman's 'hospital' section is vast. The best way to think of Talkman is as a talking phrase book, not a talking dictionary.