Dispatch is the most fun game I’ve played in a while

When I first started seeing video thumbnails of Dispatch, I thought it was an animated movie or series. I did not realize it was a game until playthroughs of it started popping up in channels that I follow. I looked into it just a little bit and discovered that it is a decision-based game with a mechanic of managing heroes as they go out and try to solve problems. That mechanic specifically caught my attention and made me interested enough to try the game out.

You play as Robert Robertson, or as he is called by his superhero name, Mech Man. Though he has no powers, he uses an armour suits passed down to him from his father, the previous Mech Man, to fight crime. However, one night when Robert is out trying to find his father’s killer, the villain named Shroud, he is ambushed and during this his mecha is destroyed. With no funds to repair it anymore, Robert is not sure how he can continue to be a hero. Lucky for him, a superhero called Blonde Blazer offers him a proposal. He can work for the SDN (superhero Dispatch Network) and manage heroes their heroes on the field from behind a desk, and in return, the SDN will provide the funds and help fix the mecha. There is a caveat though, as you will be in charge of managing the Z-team, a team of former villains who are now trying to be heroes, but it has been difficult for them to fit into their new roles. You will have to try your best to manage this group of misbehaved individuals, otherwise they will be released from the SDN and their lives as heroes will be cut short.

I went into this game with minimum expectations, the bar was low. I am happy to say that it surprised me in almost every way and superseded all of my expectations. What was the best part of this game? The characters. Such a diverse cast and colourful characters. Other than the Z-team there are other characters in the game of course, but they steal the show for me. They held nothing back when writing these characters, they went all in when it come to these former villains trying to be superheroes. Each member of the Z-team is likeable and can be the favourite of someone playing the game. The developers were really creative when coming up with these characters, both in terms of design and and in terms of personality. So much so that Roberta takes a bit of backseat and gets outshined by the rest of the characters. He has his own personality as well, and you have control of some of the choices he’ll have to make and things he’ll have to say, but the rest of the characters just steal the show.

Other than being written very well, the voice cast of this game is crazy. You have Hollywood actors Aaron Paul and Jeffrey Wright, Erin Yvette as Blonde Blazer, you got members of Critical Role such as Travis Willingham and Laura Bailey, even Youtubers such as Moistcritical and Jackspeticeye, with the rest of the voice cast being made up of other types of artists and musicians. Everyone pulls their weight, even those who are not professional voice actors. The voice acting is absolutely stellar. That, along with the writing, makes these characters such a joy to watch and listen to. There are memorable interactions in every single episode. The dialogue and characters are not just likeable and written well, they are funny as hell. This game has some very good comedy, and a lot of it is because they don’t hold anything back. Characters do things and say stuff that is outlandish and manages to get a good chuckle out of you. They don’t hold back, there is a lot of black humour and jokes that leave you a bit guilty when laughing at them. The comedic value also comes from the insane amount of profanity in this game. There is so much that the game actually has a profanity censorship that you can turn on. Profanity by itself is not always funny, but the delivery by the voice actors is always good and each character has a unique way of cursing and using insults and profanities. The writers also take advantage of this and thrown in some jokes and insults that are actually smart.

The story of dispatch is nothing to write home about. It is straightforward and some of the twists that are part of it can be seen coming. That said, this is a decision-based game. Your choices have consequences and they will shape the story. These consequences can either be immediate or will be revealed further into the future. The game has quite a few important decisions that will define your playthrough, some of them have managed to even spark debates online, namely regarding the lover interest you choose. While there is no lack of important choices, not all of them are. Most of the decisions are there to allow you to customize the story, to control how Robert would react and make it your own. It is good that the game offers choices of different types, ranging from life-saving to ones that you perhaps won’t even remember. While the decision making can make the story engaging, it is the characters that elevate it to a level where you are invested. You want to see where the story goes because you wanna see how your decision will affect the characters. Your decisions will have an impact on these characters and they in turn will go to do things that reflect their feelings and thoughts towards your decisions. The characters really form the base the game, upon which every other part of the game stand, including the story.

The decision making is important not just during the cutscenes and story beats, but in the unique mechanic of this game, the hero dispatching. In every episode, you get a section where you have to manage the Z-team as they go out into the city and try to solve problems. This was the thing that got me interested enough to play the game, and like the rest of the game, it surprised me. Each member of the Z-team has their own unique traits and powers. Their traits are expressed as points in Vigor, Charisma, Combat, intelligence, and mobility. Knowing these, you have to try and send the best-suited hero for each job. You have to pay attention to the requirements and see which member of your team can meat those. The better suited a hero is for the job, the higher their chances of success. Critical Role was actually involved with the development of this game and you can see their influence here. However, it is not as straightforward. Other than statistical requirements, you have to see if the situation can be related to non-statistical qualities of your character. For example, if the mission involves searching the sewer system for people that need saving, Sonar can be a good fit due to his sonar abilities. In this way, even if the traits of the hero do not match the requirements of the job, their unique skills might be able to help them get the job done without a problem, but this is not something that is shown to you, YOU have to figure it out. This is important because there are consequences to failing a job. Not only is your reputation as a dispatcher gonna take a hit, the hero might get injured, reducing their stats. Get them injured once more, and they will not be able to go out and do jobs. If these happen, you can use special items to undo the damage or use the special abilities of your heroes.

To be successful in dispatching, you need to think more than just each hero as an individual. To increase your chances of success in job you can send multiple heroes to each job, either to makes sure you the statistical numbers in a specific traits or if the job has different requirements and you want your heroes to cover the weaknesses of one another. In addition to that, some heroes have abilities that are activated when going with another specific team member. While some heroes get special powers, some heroes prefer to go with certain other members of the team because they get along with each other. Doing this creates synergies between these characters, increasing their chances of success when completing a mission together. While sending more heroes to each job has a lot of advantages, the big downside is that you will have fewer heroes to send for other jobs that come up later in your shift. The game introduces other things as goes it progresses to encourage or discourage sending more heroes to missions.

As you send heroes on missions, they will receive XP. Once the hero gets a certain amount of XP, you will be able to level them up, adding a point to one of their character traits. So the more you send a hero on missions, the more higher their stats will be. You can either make the hero very strong in specific traits, or you can make them a little good at everything. Other than things I’ve mentioned, there are other small things to the dispatching that make it fun. Sometimes your heroes might require your direct input during a job, sometimes you’ll have to choose between two ways to complete a mission, or you’ll have to hack something to help your heroes out in the field. The hacking minigame is fun in this game. It starts out very simple but small mechanics are added to deepen the experience. That’s the thing about the dispatching mechanic, it has more depth than what I was anticipating. It is not crazy deep or complicated, but it has the perfect amount of depth to be both enjoyable and casual. I liked the dispatching so much that I ended up wanting more. I am 100% willing to pay for a spinoff game where I get to do more dispatching. Actually I think that’s a great idea if they studio decides to go with it; a spinoff that has less story-based decision making and more dispatching with a bigger number of heroes. I see a lot of potential here and where they decide to take things.

It does have some small issues though. On controller, it would at times be a little difficult to switch between jobs/events, specially if there quite a few going on. Because of this I would end up missing a job or not clicking on an event in time. In addition to that, some dispatching sections are scripted, meaning that it will go in a direction that will be out of your control. These sections are related to the story and are meant to reflect what is going on with the world and characters. It is good that they did this as it would make the dispatch sections standout from each other and feel more unique, but I would feel a little frustrated by them. That’s why I want to play more so I get to do more actual dispatching without scripted sections that are meant to to go in a certain way. I wanted to spend more time feeling in control of the events rather than the events happening out of my control. It is not a huge issue but it is a small thing that annoyed me a little.

A lot of good games have come out this year that I have enjoyed a lot, games like Cronos and Yotei that can be considered superior games to Dispatch in their own way. Those games felt like an experience that was the result of every single aspects of those games coming together that allows you to entertain them. Dispatch, while being a smaller and simpler game, it is just pure fun. It is a bit difficult to differentiate between enjoyment and fun as I am trying to talk about Dispatch and how it stands out. Probably a big part of this is how Dispatch surprised me in so many ways, while with the other games I had high expectations that were reached. Also, I think we sometimes forget to appreciate the simple things in life, including simple games that you just have a ton of fun playing. Maybe the biggest accomplishment of this game to me is how much it got me invested into its world and mechanics. I definitely would be down for games in the future that would further explore the world and its character and/or allow you to have fun with the mecahnics that are there and maybe even adding to them.