What do you get when you combine Invincible, Critical Role, and Telltale Games? The funniest game I’ve played in years. Half interactive superhero cartoon, half frantic management game, Dispatch stands as a playable season of television for adults that I immediately wanted to replay to see what I could change, and to laugh at the jokes again.
Presented across eight episodes (released two at a time weekly last fall), Dispatch feels like you have a hand in directing a season of television, even if the overall plot likely doesn’t deviate much at all. The game’s two types of gameplay involve mostly just watching a superhero cartoon play out with a few periodic choices, and a management sim where you send your team of heroes out to save the city.
While this sounds simple, they’re elevated by incredible writing. You play as Robert, a thirtysomething hero who in the first episode has his mecha-suit destroyed. Without his own powers but lots of knowledge of the streets, Robert is recruited to run the Z-Team, a band of former villains on a path to redemption. You will come to know and love this group, along with your boss Blonde Blazer and coworker Chase. Highlight of the Z-Team is Invisigal, formerly Invisibitch, whose rough exterior - and you won’t believe this - hides someone calling out for help.
The animated scenes play out like a combination of Invincible and The Office, with a healthy dose of off-color jokes and fucks. You’re periodically picking a response from one of three choices, with the classic “Everyone will remember that” flashing in the corner when you select something particularly memorable. I laughed a lot at the ridiculous situations Robert and the Z-Team got themselves into, the standout being a bar fight that is visually hilarious with some great one-liners (“he’s only punching balls!”).
Dispatch’s main gameplay is found in the management segments, usually about one or two per episode lasting ten minutes each. You’re required to balance your team members’ individual strengths against specific missions that pop up, dispatching one or more heroes to a scene. Sometimes they will be public relation events requiring a charismatic hero, and others you’ll be fighting a kaiju and will need strength and speed. Outcomes are determined by overlaying your dispatched heroes’ skill pentagon over the mission’s requirement pentagon and bouncing a ball around to see if it lands inside the mission pentagon. It’s hard to describe, and honestly the randomness of it is a bit annoying, but makes it so not every result is predetermined.
There’s also a hacking minigame, which is fine. I suppose it breaks up some of the dispatching segments a bit. I would have preferred more interactive segments in the animated sections, the first and last episodes feature some basic fighting QTEs, but not much in between.
Throughout the management missions you’ll get constant bantering from the Z-Team, incorporating some of the choices you just made on a mission or story-based ones like who you may have fired or romanced. It’s clever writing and I ended up liking everyone quite a bit, even though they almost all start out antagonizing Robert and desperately trying to determine if he once put them in jail. (I admitted to them who I was!)
Dispatch is also voiced by a great and diverse cast, from members of Critical Role including Laura Bailey, Matt Mercer, and Travis Willingham, to Youtuber MoistCr1TiKaL, and A-listers like Jeffrey Wright and Aaron Paul. Absolutely nobody phones in their performance.
If Dispatch had simply been a TV show, I think it would have gotten similar acclaim, but it’s just a bit extra special that Dispatch is interactive and we can make some affecting choices. The characters are a blast, and the writing is some of the funniest I’ve ever seen in a game. I highly recommend it and am looking forward to a second season.
