Can a group of ex-villains become the heroes Los Angeles needs?
Light spoiler warning. I do not discuss anything, story-wise, after the first two chapters, but if you want to play completely blind, consider this your warning.
What Is It? An episodic, text-based adventure game centered around a group of low level superheroes.You play as Robert Robertson, a human with no natural superpowers who uses technology to do super deeds as Mecha Man, as is his family tradition. In the epilogue, Mecha Man gets blown up along with the source of its incredible power so Robert gets recruited into the Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN) where his job is to dispatch villains-turned-superheroes to handle appropriately low-level tasks around their assigned section of an alternate reality, modern day Los Angeles.
Before diving in, it should be noted that this is the first game from AdHoc Studios which consists of industry veterans from a few notable studios, but the most relevant here being Telltale Games.
This is a text-based adventure game. There are quick time events which can be turned off, but I’m kind of a sucker for those so I enjoyed it. You will also be given short amounts of time to make story decisions which range from incredibly minor to quite massive as to how it relates to the ongoing events. One thing to note is that you never move in this game. Many adventure games involve spending lots of time walking around talking to everybody to figure out what to do next. Dispatch is not that type of game, it is purely conversation decisions, quick time events, and the actual dispatching gameplay loop.
Speaking of which, once or twice per episode between the story sections, Robert will sit down at his work computer and start directing his team to handle calls the SDN receives. You will see a map of a small area of a city with all of your available heroes shown below. A call will come in, you click to answer and hear about the problem. Each hero has strengths and weaknesses as seen through their stats which consist of: combat, vigor, mobility, charisma, and intellect. A cat escaped from its house and is quickly running away? Send some high mobility to catch it. A brawl broke out at a local football game? Send combat and vigor. You get the idea.
Often, multiple heroes can be sent with their stats being combined. The heroes will travel to the assignment, spend some time there, and then you will get the result. The stats you sent will get overlaid on the stats that the job required and you will see the success rate as a percentage, before the game decides if it was a pass or fail. Passing will grant XP to increase stats while failure may result in injury but will also lower Robert’s rating at the end of the shift, a rating that unlocks new items such as the ability to heal an injured hero.
Dispatching is the core of the gameplay and it is a fun loop. Often, especially early on, I could not get enough of the right stats together to properly handle many calls, but I got better, as did my hero’s stats, and I was a pretty good dispatcher by the time things wrapped up. Even then, however, the whole thing had a level of stress as trying to balance sending multiple heroes to ensure success vs sending fewer so I had some ready for future calls was a bit of pressure throughout.
The last gameplay wrinkle is a hacking system which shows up maybe two or three times per dispatch session. You will navigate a cube-like item through a grid, entering directional commands, unlocking gates, avoiding/destroying viruses which hunt you, and so on. This is a fun diversion from the main gameplay, but I’m glad it wasn’t used more frequently as it seemed ripe for overstaying its welcome.
Each episode runs around an hour, with the full eight episodes taking probably a little more than eight total hours.
The Best Part: From the start, the art style of Dispatch stands front and center. This looks like a really good, high budget animated television show. There is nothing super unique going on here, but the sheer quality of the visuals jump off of the screen the entire time. From an adorably overweight doggo to a handful of villains-turned-superheroes with their own unique styles to occasionally gory scenes, the art here is top notch.
The Worst Part: The only real controls you use in this game are in the hacking sections and navigating around the city map to handle calls. The UX around the latter is really quite bad. I never know where my “cursor” is, I end up having to hit different directions until one of the icons over a call changes to indicate I am selecting it. Pressing the up direction when your cursor is to the far left or right of the hero-selection panel below the map sometimes won’t work if there isn’t a call icon over top of it. It’s a needlessly clunky system which really stands out in a game where there is nothing else that feels remotely bad to control.
The Verdict: I am generally not a fan of adventure games. Dispatch drew me in with the visuals and the episodic nature. Seeing people hype up the new episode drops on Bluesky was fun, it is a really interesting way to release a video game.
I’m glad those things led me to this game because I had a great time. The story takes some twists and turns as you would hope; just when you think you’ve got it all figured out something unexpected will happen. The overall story is strong and held together with very good writing which deftly serves humor on a regular basis while also handling more serious tones throughout. It was interesting enough that I am absolutely planning on playing the game again and making different choices.
The dispatching gameplay is fun and engaging. It is a source of constant stress as it mostly feels like you can’t successfully complete each call and you are forced to make resource distribution decisions without being sure of what comes next. Perfectionists might get frustrated, but we all just do the best we can at the time and hope it works out.
Last time I reviewed an adventure game I said “I am likely still not an adventure game fan…” but between that and Dispatch, maybe I’m turning the corner? It is fun playing an interactive television show where you get to make choices which affect the story.
An engaging story which is rounded off with great visuals and a fun gameplay loop. If all of this wrapped in an adventure game sounds like a good time, Dispatch is an easy game to recommend.
How to Play: PlayStation 5*, PC
*console played on for this review
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