Superheroes flying around the world and solving crime is one thing. But what about the unsung heroes: the dispatchers, who direct the talent to where they need to be?
The Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN) is much more effective than a bat symbol shining in the sky, let me tell you.
Dispatch is a superhero workplace comedy full of colourful characters, redemption arcs, and some truly impressive office shenanigans that would never get past your company’s HR team. Whether you’re looking to save this alternate version of Los Angeles or let it be taken over by the Red Ring, this is sure to be a riot for all fans of the interactive storytelling format.
Spoilers abound for gameplay. Some signposted plot spoilers.
A Super Hilarious Workplace Adventure
You are Robert Robertson, AKA Mecha Man, a retired superhero who becomes a dispatcher for (barely) reformed villains at the SDN. After your suit is destroyed by the man who killed your father, you’re given a second chance at saving lives – this time behind a computer instead of out in the field. You have to manage their rehab and heroics while uncovering a conspiracy involving your nemesis.
And it’s hysterical.
The stakes are immediately personal: a formidable supervillain, Shroud, not only threatens the whole city, but is crucial not just for Robert’s revenge, but for him to get his suit back. Interestingly, you’re both a superhero and not; much like Batman. If Robert had innate superpowers instead of a mech suit, you wouldn’t have these issues: he wouldn’t have an emotional connection to his father through the suit, and he wouldn’t be out of action for so long while it’s getting repaired. And Robert being out of action is absolutely crucial to allow us to spend so much time with the affectionately named Z-Team.
At its core, Dispatch is about responsibility. You’re the person behind the scenes, deciding who goes where, when, and why. The story unfolds gradually, often through conversations and hilarious, crude scenes that give real flavour to what’s going on. And, of course, the outcomes of your decisions.
What I really liked about the story is how grounded it feels, even when things get strange or humorous. It doesn’t rely on huge twists every five minutes; instead, it builds tension through uncertainty. You’re often left wondering whether you made the right call, and the game is very comfortable letting you sit with the consequences. That restraint makes the narrative feel more mature and believable.
The game’s just 8 episodes long, amounting to around 9 or 10 hours of gameplay, but the amount of story they manage to tell in the time is impressive. I was never bored – in fact, I wanted the story to keep going way beyond its run time – and I was excited to meet new characters and see the Z-Team evolve. Who will rise to the occasion, and who’ll fall by the wayside? This is another core part of the responsibility aspect: if you trust your teammates and support them, you might just be the reason they become one of the true good guys. For some, it might be sickly sweet, but for me, I adore a redemption arc, and this story has them in spades.
Gameplay: Choose Your Own Adventure
The game is designed and implemented by former Telltale Games developers – and it shows.
Dispatch leans heavily into the “your choices matter” philosophy, and for the most part, it earns it. Your decisions are true decisions – there’s no false control here. You won’t be given responses that seem different, but ultimately lead to the same conclusions. If you decide not to flirt with a hot hero, she might not see you romantically later on. If you’re too harsh on your team, maybe they’ll turn against you when you need them the most. Your decisions shape relationships, affect outcomes, and influence how the story unfolds over time. Just how I like it.
What works especially well is that the game doesn’t always tell you what the best option is. There’s rarely a clear good-or-bad choice, just trade-offs. You might solve one problem while creating another, or keep someone safe at the cost of trust elsewhere. This makes each decision feel personal rather than mechanical.
What kept me truly engaged was, of course, the knife-sharp writing. The game was co-produced by Critical Role, an organisation that begun as a Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game between friends. This group of now professional voice actors and internet personalities have clearly inserted their humour – and voices! – into the game, making it feel modern and silly, but still deeply introspective and realistic; no mean feat for a bombastic story about superheroes.
Some of my favourite scenes were ones like the bar fight or even just interactions between our eclectic characters. There are memorable lines that resonate long after I’ve finished to others that shine a spotlight on characters’ motivations and personalities. I especially like anything Flambae says (“Half man, half bat, all freak”).
I love that I feel like my actions really made a difference to these bunch of misfits. You’re also likely to replay simply to see what happens when you don’t play it safe. What if you trusted the wrong person, or took a risk you avoided the first time? Those unanswered “what ifs” are a strong pull back into another playthrough. And a story that can make me want to replay to see more outcomes, despite having a fairly rigid structure, is a true achievement.
Gameplay: Clocking In At Work
As you can imagine, this game called Dispatch involves a bit of dispatching, assigning superheroes to a variety of jobs. Go figure.
Using only your wits – and navigating various roadblocks, usually invoked by your team of loose canons and morally grey reformed villains – you monitor a city map, attempting to put out fires before they take out the rest of the town. Hazard notifications will pop up with a time limit, alerting you to the jobs the SDN needs to take care of.
Each of your team members have stats, such as Combat, Mobility, Intelligence, and Charisma, that you need to take into consideration when deciding who to send out on a job. You can combine team members to fill glaring holes, or just send one along and hope for the best. Success is often a dice roll, particularly in the early game, when your teams’ stats are low: even when you send the best guy for the job, you might get a fail. Success earns you experience points that will eventually lead to permanent stat boosts, whilst failure can lead to your heroes either getting hurt or being taken out of commission for that shift, severely limiting your options.
Levelling up the Z-Team will also result in your ragtag heroes earning special skills that will give a real boost to your efficiency, and your success. For example:
· When sent alone, Invisigal’s Lone Wolf skill will activate, reducing travel and call completion time – if you think she can handle it herself.
· Eventually, Coupé will be able to reattempt calls that fail with her Pirouette ability.
· Prism can create Doppelganger Illusions, duplicating the hero to her left with half their stats for extra firepower.
Most of the skills are fantastic boosts to your gameplay, and I found that it as the shifts got harder, my teammates often rose to the occasion. It’s a brilliant way to highlight one of the core themes of the game: teamwork.
Another is the synergy team-ups. When you send certain heroes together, you unlock team-ups, which give the chosen duos certain boosts to their abilities. I particularly liked sending heroes like Coupe and Punch Up or Invisigal and Golem together, as their stats complemented their partners’, giving me more chance of success across the board.
The story and team morale also heavily influence how well the Z-Team performs. Sometimes, your band of heroes are fighting against each other instead of the tasks at hand, either due to personal grudges or to avoid being cut from the team. Each member can go rogue, acting in their own interests instead of for the team. While it was sometimes frustrating, as it meant failing certain missions when we otherwise should have succeeded, I can’t help but admit that this integration into the overall story was compelling, making me feel Robert’s irritation first hand.
Basically, I found all the dispatch sections challenging, interesting, and very engaging. My biggest gripe with the game is that I wanted to do more dispatching. Every chapter only has a couple of dispatching sections, and I found myself wanting to clock in more shifts. I get that most of the dispatch shifts are scripted, to an extent, to move the story along. But I would have loved an option to go in and play with our characters in a separate sidegame, just so I could play around with synergies and solve randomised problems around the city.
An Unlikely Team
This world reminds me considerably of My Hero Acadamia. It’s all about colourful characters with superheroes, striving to become better, overcome predispositions, and save the world – and they’re all fully realised characters.
The characters are one of Dispatch’s biggest strengths. Each one feels distinct, with their own personalities, strengths, flaws, and quirks. Over time, you start to learn who you can rely on in certain situations. and who might cause more trouble than they’re worth.
For example, while we have some fun interactions with Flambae, I did learn that he was one of the most likely to turn on you, as he has a run in with Mecha Man early in the story. That made me want to rely on him less during missions. Golem, on the other hand, was one of the first characters who made me warm up towards the Z-Team. When you join your ragtag team at a supervillain bar, The Sardine, his giant stature means he’s forced to sit outside with headphones, waiting for you to get him a drink (or two!) and feel part of the festivities. It really made me consider that maybe he, and the rest of the Z-Team, could all be reasoned with and, ultimately, redeemed.
And in this kind of story, this is so important: it makes you understand that most of the reformed villains them have simply lost their way, and need a helping hand to guide them back to the light. This empathetic lens is the emotional core of the game.
Speaking of the supervillain bar – wow. It’s a fantastic example of just how funny this game truly is. If you don’t want (fairly minor) spoilers about what goes on during this part, skip ahead to the next section!
We start off, as Robert, feeling like a fish out of water; of course. We’re in a supervillain bar. But Robert’s growing on the team, and they’ve allowed him to join him for drinks after work. Sure, they keep their distance to maintain their reputations, but he’s a loose part of the gang. Flambae sings karaoke about how much Robert is a loser as a fantastic backdrop for what’s to come.
Mechanical villain Armstrong challenges Invisigal, and without hesitation, Robert stands up for her, even though he’s the only normie in the whole bar. Because he’s a hero. And for this, he gets thrown across the room and gets hit in the back of the head with a pool cue.
Despite their attempts to be standoffish around Robert, the Z-Team spring into action. We get some truly hilarious interactions with the members and who they’re fighting with: a dude says “She temporarily blinded me!” and Prism responds, “F**k you mean temporarily? Bitch you blind forever!”; Punch Up’s running around at crotch height, and of course, “He’s only punching diiiii*ks!”; Golem blasts into the bar, asking why he wasn’t notified of the fight. It’s pure chaos, and not only do we get to see the loyalty of the Z-Team, but we’re laughing the whole way through.
It's this mix of dark humour, sincere interactions, and fully realised characters that kept me engaged the whole way through the game.
A Beautifully Intentional World
A big plus for this game is its timeless design.
The art style is clean, readable, and focussed on clarity – crucial for a game where information, timing, and decision-making matter more than visual noise. Of course, it’s a reflection of the comic book artstyle, which blends flawlessly with the superhero subject matter. But I found it was most important that I could still appreciate the design while concentrating on quick time events, and this was absolutely possible.
The character designs are fun and colourful. You can tell what kind of person they are just by looking at them, or who they want you to be. As we learn quite early on, Flambae chose his own outfit, deep V neck and all. Prism is a pop star, and her blue-and-pink hair and outfit reflects that. Malevola doesn’t need flashy clothes: her horns, red skin, and muscles showcase her as a powerhouse who doesn’t need to perform for others.
And the voice acting, for the most part, compliments these designs. Invisigal’s Laura Bailey is emotive, but also bratty at times, truly evoking the character’s duality. Erin Yvette (Blonde Blazer) effortlessly parries between her heroic prose and nerdy banter. Matthew Mercer (Shroud) is well known for his voice acting, and for good reason: his performance here is creepy and memorable.
Aaron Paul – first time video game voice actor! – shows that he wasn’t hired to attract those who know him from Breaking Bad. His performance as Robert is stellar and emotive.
The only one I’m not sold on is Alanah Pearce. She’s a prominent figure in the gaming industry, known for writing and hosting, but I think her voice acting leaves something to be desired. It seemed like a very understated – or perhaps lethargic? – performance.
Overall, however, the art style, design, and performances all come together to create a story that I still think about long after I’ve finished. And that’s no mean feat.
Final Thoughts
A true example of the “your choices matter” video game genre, Dispatch provides both an emotional story and a lot of laughs. The voice actors bring the characters to life, and each feel like their own fully realised person to bond with and help redeem.
But the most important aspect of this game is the story. It’s a heart-warming tale about redemption, trust, patience, and connection in a fantastical setting – my favourite! – that has made me consider my choices and actions long after the credits rolled. The dispatching mini game is both engaging and a fun way to tie the main story into the gameplay, with only the hacking puzzles feeling more stressful than fun. Either way, it’s a brilliant emotional rollercoaster that really investigates superheroes, villains, and everyone in between, and it’s well worth playing.
That concludes our thoughts on Dispatch. Do you agree? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames.
