Dispatch is the only game that can go from dick-punching supervillains to genuinely heartwrenching character drama in the same scene - and somehow land both perfectly. It's gorgeously animated, effortlessly funny, and mature in a way that doesn't feel like it was written by edgy teenagers who just discovered swear words.
Dispatch is the kind of game you finish and then sit there going "okay, WHO do I throw money at to get more of this?" And that's not hyperbole either - I genuinely want a sequel, prequel, and maybe even a breakfast cereal. So let me show you why this Telltale-style superhero comedy hooked me so hard - and don't worry, I won't spoil anything. That would be criminal, and I've seen what the heroes do to those!
Video version of this review (~11 minutes)
Meet the Z-Team
You play as Robert Robertson III, also known as Mecha Man, whose superpower is the same as Batman’s: generational wealth. Unfortunately for Robert, the story starts with him getting beaten up and left in the same situation as Robin - poor and robotless.
Desperate and without any other options, Robert joins SDN - the Superhero Dispatch Network - as a lowly dispatcher for the Z-Team, the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel team of ex-villains and rejects. This fun club includes characters like the previously mentioned penis-pummeler Punch Up, Malevola who is a half-demon that seems to be able to eat pain, Flambae who is the type of person to wear sunglasses indoors at night, and also my favorite - Waterboy, a hero whose power is to vomit water.
They're all ridiculous stereotypes played for laughs, but somehow Dispatch manages to give all of them emotional depth. I know I keep bringing him up constantly, but Punch Up is a guy whose entire joke is that he's short so he uppercuts people in the dick. And yet, he's not a joke. He's an actual character with some genuinely heartwarming moments.
His character is a joke, but he isn't
Good writing goes a long way
The secret sauce here is the writing. It’s the thing that lets Dispatch take these cartoonishly stupid characters and make their conversations feel... weirdly natural. When they argue about the most trivial nonsense, you can feel the years of history behind it - the grudges, the petty drama, the "I swear if you touch my stuff again I’m going to dropkick you through a wall" sort of sibling energy.
And as the story goes on, the characters actually grow. Not in the super cheesy "I’m good now, look at me doing hero things" way, but in small, believable ways - the kind that feels like real people getting over real problems. Because realistically, you don't go from wanting to burn someone's face off to being besties forever overnight. There are a lot of steps in between, and Dispatch somehow fits all of that into an 8-10 hour runtime without any of it feeling rushed.
My only gripe with the story is the big bad. You see them early on, they do their villain monologue thing, and then I guess they just fall into an open manhole - because you don't see them until the final hour. They could've used a few more flashbacks to really flesh out why they deserve a swift kick to the nuts.
The badguys are cool, but they really needed more screen time
And speaking of gonads, I have to give Dispatch credit for how it handles its mature themes. Normally when a game calls itself mature, that's just it saying "look, we put swears and nipples in here." Now Dispatch has plenty of swearing and more dangly bits than I ever expected to see, but it never feels like it's trying too hard to be edgy. Instead it all feels like a perfectly natural thing that just sort of happens when you hang out with former villains.
And oh boy does it happen a lot. If you only heard the audio, you’d assume this game takes place on a pirate ship because the FPS - that is Fucks Per Second - gets impressively high at times. But again, it never feels forced. When things go sideways and everyone is stressed out of their mind, what else can you really say besides "well...shit"?
But all of this would fall apart if the voice acting didn’t carry its weight, and thankfully everyone absolutely nails it. I was a little worried when I saw some of the casting choices as a few people felt like they were here purely because they were famous, but nope. They actually crushed it. Sure, I could nitpick and say there's a few lines that sound like they were recorded inside a bathroom stall, but honestly... who cares? I was having too much fun to worry about that nonsense.
Dispatch turns even the simplest of scenes into something memorable
Rise of the rejects
But you know what genuinely blindsided me: the actual gameplay is ridiculously addictive. I went in expecting the usual Telltale-style "move around and click on things until the talking starts," but Dispatch’s... well... dispatching is actually good. The "I’ll just do one more round before bed - oh no it’s 2AM" sort of good.
The setup is simple. Each hero has five core stats, and every mission requires a certain spread of them. So when you need someone to defend the Z-Team on a talk show, maybe don’t send the 1-charisma guy who can barely stammer out a single sentence.
What makes all of this work is that Dispatch actually has teeth. It's actually challenging. The game loves to throw wildcards at you: story twists, sudden emergencies, or even just your team disobeying you. So you constantly have to improvise, take risky assignments, and pray for the best. You really do get the sense that you’re wrangling a bunch of lovable screw-ups and trying to save the day against impossible odds. So when you do succeed, it just feels great.
But, there’s a catch. A pretty big one. Outside of the final mission, the dispatch gameplay doesn't really affect the story. Whether you succeed, fail, or send someone to the hospital through a "plane to the face" sort of emergency, it doesn’t matter. As soon as a cinematic starts, everything resets back to normal like a cartoon character brushing off an explosion. The gameplay and story feel like they’re living in different apartments and only text each other on the weekends. It doesn't ruin anything, not by a long shot, but it's a missed opportunity.
The dispatching is simple, yet beyond addictive
A Telltale-style story
Just like the Telltale classics, Dispatch gives you plenty of choices each episode... just don't expect wildly diverging timelines where you end up as the main villain, or are secretly made out of cheese. Everyone goes through roughly the same story, but the way you shape that journey - your tone, your attitude, the little character moments - those are entirely yours.
I know some people get grumpy about this, but personally? I prefer this approach. Give me a tightly written, coherent story with a bit of wiggle room over a sprawling mess that eventually collapses under its own weight.
I won’t spoil anything, but what I can say is that it hits every emotional beat it aims for, and it hits them hard. When it wants to be heartfelt, it goes full melodrama... but in a good way. When it wants to be funny, it puts on a clown wig and trips on a banana. And when it decides to get violent... well, let’s just say there are moments where you briefly moonlight as an interior decorator and repaint some rooms red.
The whole bar scene is just great from start to finish
This could've been a TV show
Needless to say, the visuals do a lot of the heavy lifting here. Dispatch has a very clean, animated comic-book style, and it looks fantastic. It doesn't even matter if we're talking about the big bombastic action scenes or two characters sitting in a chair - there's little details everywhere that give the game so much personality. It's not like you can even focus on all of that when there's a giant robot flying across the screen, and yet Dispatch still put in the effort. It's quite clear that the animators truly cared.
The whole thing is polished enough that I wouldn’t even blink if Dispatch ended up being adapted into a short animated series, because it already looks like one.
The truly magical bit is that all of these elements combine into something that feels genuine. You end up caring about these rejects and rooting for them all the way through. So much so that in the finale I was stuck grinning like a gargoyle. So many tiny jokes, throwaway lines and cool character quirks ended up paying off in spectacular ways, and I just wish I could tell you about them... mostly for my own sake as keeping it all bottled in is dangerous for my health.
But perhaps the greatest compliment I can give Dispatch's storytelling is this: as the credits rolled, my first thought was "I need more".
Is Dispatch worth playing?
And now for the big question: is Dispatch worth playing? Are you kidding me? Absolutely. Go play it right now. Support the game, support the devs, and hopefully we'll keep getting more games like this - brilliantly written, deeply emotional, and still a joy to play all the way through.
While I do have a few quibbles with how disconnected the gameplay can feel from the story, Dispatch is still one of the best games I’ve played in years and a genuine contender for my personal game of the year. It’s exactly the kind of game that inspired me to write reviews in the first place, so definitely give it a try if you like what you've seen.