Dispatch Review: The Best TV Show You'll Play This Year
Barely a game, absolutely a masterpiece. Dispatch's superhero workplace comedy had all three of us binge it in one sitting.
Ryan spent the lead-up to this episode trolling us, telling Josh, Ace and anyone who'd listen that he hated Dispatch. Then Josh checked Ryan's Steam achievements and saw he had more than Josh did. The truth came out fast:
I freaking love this game, dude. I finished seven straight episodes and was falling asleep in my chair. This was one of the sickest experiences I've ever been on.
All three of us agree. Fair warning before you dive in: Dispatch is a mature game made for adults.
What is Dispatch?
It looks like Invincible and plays like a Telltale game, only even lighter on gameplay. You're Robert, a.k.a. Mecha Man, a hero without powers who's lost his suit. A company offers to rebuild it if he'll work as a dispatcher for its Phoenix Program, which takes supervillains and turns them into superheroes. The trouble is that they still have the attitudes of supervillains.
If you're content to sit and watch eight cartoon episodes where you occasionally click a button or wiggle your mouse, this is an experience you absolutely want.
The "game" part
There are two kinds of gameplay:
1. Dispatching. Calls come in: rescue someone fast, then fight off some goons. You send heroes whose stats fit the job, based on combat, vigor, mobility, charisma and intellect. They level up, and you choose where their points go. (Ryan put every single point into charisma for Waterboy, the most awkward janitor alive, and turned him into a smooth talker.) Heroes need rest, so if you send everyone out at once, you'll miss calls, and how you do here does affect the story. 2. Choices. At key moments you pick how Robert responds. Do you fist-bump the gym bro at the urinal? (Obviously.) After each episode, the game shows how your choices compared to other players'. The main story mostly lands in the same place either way, but each choice changes the moment around it, and it makes you care about every pick.
Josh's honest take: this is the lightest gameplay of any narrative game he's played. It's 90% TV show and 10% video game. And it doesn't matter.
The Z-Team
Your squad of reformed villains includes Flambae (who lost a couple of fingers to Mecha Man and has one of the funniest songs in the game), Golem (Ryan says it's basically Clayface, and Golem grows on you), Punch Up (who, uh, aims low), Malevola, Prism, Invisigal, and a few more. Early on you have to cut someone from the team and pick a replacement. Ryan and Ace chose Waterboy. Josh went with Phenomaman, a depressed Superman type with a melon subscription that won't end ("11 months remain").
And Chase, Robert's best friend, might be the best character in the game. Plus Beef, the roundest dog you'll ever see.
The presentation
This is the headline.
If this was a Netflix show, the world would be losing its mind.
The voice acting is some of the best we've heard in a game. The animation and the music are top tier. Ace has the house party song on his playlist. It makes superheroes feel like normal, messy people, and you'll laugh, get angry and get choked up, sometimes in the same episode. Ace's favorite scene is a night out at the bar where Robert finally bonds with the team. The romance subplot keeps you guessing too. Josh was very much Team Blonde Blazer, and the game had other ideas.
The gripes
Ryan wishes the choices had more story-changing weight. If you're going to call it a game, do the extra bit. And if you need real gameplay, this isn't it. Know what you're getting into.
The VGP take
Three 9.5s. All three of us binged it, and nobody ran into a single technical issue.
You'd spend $20 to see a two-hour movie. This is $30 for a six-hour, best-show-you've-seen experience.
If you're an adult and you've got a free evening, sit down, treat it like a season of TV, and press play.