{"id":11717,"date":"2025-11-15T13:07:34","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T05:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=11717"},"modified":"2025-11-15T13:07:34","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T05:07:34","slug":"dispatch-review-ign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=11717","title":{"rendered":"Dispatch Review – IGN"},"content":{"rendered":"


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We\u2019ve seen stories built around redemption arcs plenty of times before, and if I\u2019m being honest, I\u2019m a total sucker for them. A sarcastic baddie who, despite their disdain for the law, gains enough empathy to save the day \u2013 what\u2019s not to like? After eight episodes full of cliffhangers, surprising plot twists, and patience-testing puzzles, Dispatch has finished its own rumination on the topic, allowing me to take a more active role in determining who amongst its strong cast of charming superheroes deserves a second chance. It\u2019s fitting, then, that developer AdHoc Studio has similarly revived a style of video game I worried was fading into the background, confidently injecting the interactive narrative genre with exciting new life. <\/p>\n

Dispatch takes place in a captivating bizarro Los Angeles where superpowered beings, aliens, demons, and all manner of extraordinary humanoids coexist with regular people. As you can imagine, not every gifted being is benevolent, and many choose (or are forced into) a life of villainy. To help manage the onslaught of supers roaming the streets, an organisation called the SDC has stepped in, launching an insurance-type racket that allows citizens to pay for the privilege of a powerful watchdog. One of the aforementioned good guys is our discerning protagonist, Robert Robertson \u2014 otherwise known as Mecha Man \u2014 whose heroic aspirations are dashed when a rogue explosive renders his suit useless, leaving him to take on the role of a call centre worker at a small branch of the SDC.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s not all, though, as due to his lack of tenure, Robert is tasked with managing a group of barely reformed villains, lovingly called the Z-team, whose snarky attitudes and violent tendencies leave a lot to be desired. Across Dispatch\u2019s approximately eight-hour runtime, it\u2019s compelling to watch Robert grow in the wake of this sudden downgrade, experiencing the peaks and valleys of shift work. I found myself invested from start to finish thanks to Dispatch\u2019s grounded, witty writing and the heartfelt performances delivered by its sizable cast.<\/p>\n

Your time with Dispatch is split into two distinct parts: most of the time, you\u2019ll be chatting through beautifully animated cutscenes, picking between amusing dialogue options and completing quick-time events like those seen in The Wolf Among Us<\/u> or the Life is Strange<\/u> series. Certain decisions trigger a heart-pounding \u2018X Person remembered that\u2019 notification at the top of the screen, which feels like a refreshing jolt of nostalgia in 2025. Not every decision is as impactful as you might expect, and more often than not, my choices led to unique jokes or funny animations rather than game-shifting consequences. Crucially, though, when the credits finally rolled \u2014 avoiding any spoilers \u2014 the ending I received still felt true to my version of Robert. It says something that I\u2019m keen to jump in again, to see how the other narrative branches pan out. <\/p>\n

It says something that I\u2019m keen to jump in again after rolling credits.<\/div>\n

The rest of your time is spent working at the SDC as a Dispatcher, assigning superheroes to a variety of jobs. Using your mouse and your wits, you\u2019ll monitor a city map where hazard notifications periodically pop up with a timer, alerting you to various jobs the SDC needs to handle efficiently. Each hero under your command has a stat matrix, similar to that seen in Pok\u00e9mon<\/u>. You\u2019ll receive a verbal description as a job appears, with your own task being to match your best hero, or in some cases heroes, based on their stats and personalities. You’ll be told very soon after whether you\u2019ve passed or failed, with success earning you experience points that lead to a permanent stat boost for each hero. Failure, on the other hand, can lead to your heroes getting hurt or, worse, being taken out of commission for the shift. Managing their individual skill sets as multiple clocks tick down in front of you is a surprisingly stressful task that compelled me to lock in.<\/p>\n

On top of stat boosts, the Z-team can also earn special skills that impact how efficiently you operate. The superstar-turned-superhero Prism can use her powers of duplication to extend the timer on jobs, carving out precious moments to find a resolution. Elsewhere, Invisigal can utilize her lone wolf status to increase her speed if sent solo. All these moving parts compound over time and meld together well, creating a satisfying feedback loop that complements the complexity of the surrounding story without overwhelming you.<\/p>\n

Aspects like team morale, along with how you impact poignant story beats, shape how effectively the Z-Team will perform, too. During one shift early in the series, the heroes are fighting against one another, hoping to avoid being cut from the team. This argumentative overtone bled into the dispatching minigame, with each member acting on their own accord rather than on my explicit orders. <\/strong>While I was frustrated by this at first, hoping to overcome the challenge with my wits, these moments of disobedience did well to integrate the interactive segments into the overarching story, with AdHoc effectively conveying Robert’s irritability by ensuring you feel it firsthand. It\u2019s one thing to write an emotive character for me to play as, it\u2019s another to actually make me want to quit a job I don\u2019t really have in the exact way they do. <\/p>\n

A secondary hacking minigame is also part of your day-to-day activities, as Robert flexes the only superpower he has left: his mind. Here, you\u2019ll roll a 3D object through a cybernetic maze as the clock ticks down, using directional inputs to forge a path towards the end goal. On top of the clock, you\u2019ll also need to evade undulating anti-virus orbs and transfer power sources between light blocks to unlock new paths. It can be overwhelming at times as the difficulty scales over the course of Dispatch\u2019s eight episodes, and muscling through these puzzles sticks out as some of the least compelling moments in a game that is otherwise full of them, which is a shame.<\/p>\n

A steady mix of dark humor and sincere interactions kept me on my toes.<\/div>\n

Still, despite all the roadblocks I faced at the hands of the Z-Team, I found myself defending them at every point, like a parent going to bat for their misbehaving children. The concept of ethically murky superhumans has been explored across film and TV before, but Dispatch often subverts expectations through a steady mix of dark humor and sincere interactions that kept me on my toes. <\/p>\n

For example, while celebrating a win at one point, Robert and his team visit a villain bar, but the Thing-like Golem is forced to sit outside due to their humongous size. At this point, I\u2019d taken quite a dislike to them and their attitude, and yet watching them slumped on the gutter with their earbuds in made them appear more human than rock monster. Just like that, a switch had flipped inside my head, and I was putty in the palm of AdHoc\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

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Sarah’s favourite hero games<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

What makes Dispatch\u2019s redemption story so effective is how it portrays its villains as emotionally complicated souls who may have lost their way rather than one-dimensional brutes. This empathetic lens makes it enticing to peel back the layers of the group, no matter how horrible they\u2019re being or how petulant they seem. That\u2019s not to say every character is worth forgiving, but instead, if you\u2019re willing to make a risky dialogue choice, you may be rewarded with precious lore that could sway how you react in future situations, or what kind of ending you will receive. <\/p>\n

All this drama is delivered through incredible vocal performances that bring Dispatch\u2019s most profound moments to life with finesse, from the main cast of heroes to the background characters as well. Laura Bailey\u2019s Invisigal masterfully dances between bratty and sincere, often encouraging me to break the rules with her flirty, if not threatening, style. Erin Yvette, on the other hand, subtly switches between Blonde Blazers’ heroic prose and dorky banter with sharp precision. Notably, Aaron Paul\u2019s Robert is more than just Hollywood stunt casting \u2013 he\u2019s a standout here, delivering a nuanced performance as a man struggling to hold onto his optimism while reconciling with who he is outside of his giant mech suit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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