Dispatch review-in-progress: funny, beautiful, and clever… so far

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Dispatch is a visually stunning animated series about Robert Robertson, also known as Mecha Man. After his Iron Man-like suit is damaged, he’s forced to take on a new role: answering emergency calls for a team of reformed supervillains who are trying to go straight.

If I had to compare this game to something else, it’d be Invincible. You play as heroes who are seriously messed up, get beat to a pulp, and aren’t afraid to swear. Early on, I was fighting this trash-talking villain named Toxic – yeah, he literally fights with his… well, you get the picture – and the game immediately asks if I want to stomp him or kick him through a window and across the whole city! It’s super sharp, genuinely funny, and the voice acting is amazing, with big names like Aaron Paul, Laura Bailey, Jeffrey Wright, Matthew Mercer, and Erin Yvette all involved. Plus, they even got some YouTubers in there, which is cool.

The characters are well-developed and have complicated relationships. You’ll need to figure out how to best work with your team of unusual heroes, like Invisigal, who’s an anxious, asthmatic individual with ADHD and can become invisible by holding her breath, and Flambae, a fiery character with a quick temper. Unfortunately, due to the review schedule, I can only discuss what happens in the first two episodes, even though I’ve seen half of the season. I can’t reveal how these character dynamics unfold or connect just yet.

Even though the game is no longer made by Telltale, the new developers at Adhoc are still releasing it in episodes. While that might sound frustrating, they’re launching two episodes each week, which helps. But reviewing the game now, before I know how my decisions will impact the rest of the story, feels difficult – like trying to do my job without the tools I need.

Adhoc is trying to build on the storytelling approach of games like those made by Telltale, but with more player interaction. In each episode, you act as a dispatcher, managing time and resources in a simple strategy game to send heroes on missions. However, episodes are short – around an hour – meaning I’ve only played each one for about 15 minutes, with half of that spent in a tutorial. There’s no open world to explore; you only directly control conversations and, later on, the dispatch sequences. Initially, the team doesn’t trust you, so they don’t always follow your orders, making those early dispatch missions feel pre-determined.

The game has a lot of promise. Heroes work well with some others but clash with others, and different situations call for different team compositions. As you progress, you’ll also be able to improve your heroes’ abilities through a simple RPG-style system, boosting stats like combat strength, charisma, and agility to make them better in various areas.

Sending the right team isn’t enough on its own. The game doesn’t directly show you your chances of success – you have to figure it out based on the problem and your heroes’ abilities. Then, a random element comes into play: success is determined by whether a bouncing ball lands in the overlapping area of two shapes. If it does, you win!

Occasionally, you’ll need to directly intervene in events, and there’s a fun little hacking game where you can control security cameras and other smart devices. My biggest issue is that it’s clunky to select the right situation on the controller, which is frustrating when you’re under pressure to react quickly.

Dispatch is off to a great start and has a lot of potential, but it’s unclear if it can keep viewers engaged with its slow release of episodes, especially during the fall when many new games come out. Hopefully it can, because the first few episodes are really funny and suggest this could be a truly special series. I genuinely laughed out loud several times while watching – and that doesn’t happen often! The writing is clever, the acting is fantastic, the animation quality is top-notch, and the interactive parts hint at a deeper story. However, I think the show would be best enjoyed if all the episodes were released at once, since you don’t actually play very much in each individual episode.

Version tested: PC

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2025-10-21 17:17