The first episode opens with two men talking. One is laying on his back on the floor looking like he’s been in a fight. The other is off-screen. The whole thing begins in media res, but we pick up on some key details right away. The father of the man on the ground was killed by somebody named Shroud. He’s looking for revenge. A moment later, we see the other man, tied to a chair. He also looks pretty beat up.
A moment later, the first man is holding that chair over the edge of a balcony, demanding to know Shroud’s location. And this is when what appears, at first blush, to be an animated TV show suddenly becomes a game. You’re given a choice: Pull the man back up from the ledge, or let him drop.
The first man is Robert Robertson III. In the next scene, we learn he’s also Mecha Man – a Los Angeles superhero who galivants around in a big robot fighting crime and super-powered villains. His father was murdered by the supervillain, Shroud, the nefarious leader of a mysterious cabal of bad guys. Robert, voiced by Breaking Bad alum, Aaron Paul, heads to a dark warehouse to kill him, and gets more than he bargained for when he’s ambushed by countless goons and villains.
What follows is one of the most impressive games I’ve played in years. But it’s as much a TV show as it is a game. Dispatch is a new episodic game out on PC and PlayStation 5 that’s an entirely original story crafted by former members of TellTale Games, a studio known for its story-driven adventure games. TellTale’s games were basically point-and-click “interactive movies” more than what you’d traditionally think of as a video game.
The same is true here, though Dispatch blows away any of the TellTale titles I played (though admittedly I didn’t play them all). For one thing, the animation is simply astonishing. This looks better than most animated shows. And since so much of the game is basically an animated TV show (you even have the option to play without Quick-Time Events or QTEs if you really want to just sit back and watch) having such gorgeous animation is a huge plus.
But it’s much more than that. The musical score, composed by Andrew Arcadi (with additional music by Skyler Barto) is beautiful and intense. The voice-acting is some of the best I’ve ever experienced in a video game. Joining Paul, we have pretty much the entire main cast of Critical Role – Ashley Johnson, Travis Willingham, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Laura Bailey, Liam O’Brien, Taliesin Jaffe and Matthew Mercer – not to mention Jeffrey Wright (who starred alongside Paul in Westworld, and alongside Johnson and Bailey in The Last Of Us). Others in the cast include Erin Yvette and a number of YouTube creators like Jacksepticeye, MoistCr1TiKaL, Joel Haver and Alanah Pearce.
Of course, all the great actors in the world can’t save a bad script. Fortunately, Dispatch has some of the best writing I’ve ever encountered in a video game. The characters are all fully-realized. The humor is actually funny. There are genuinely poignant moments and plenty of exciting action set-pieces. The fact that you can make so many choices that fundamentally alter the course of the story only makes it that much more impressive. Even the romance options are compelling, and I’m usually a little impatient when it comes to romance options in video games.
But wait, there’s more! On top of the story-driven sections of the game, there’s an entire second game baked in. The reason the game is called Dispatch is because Robert Robertson III has to give up his superhero life and is brought into a superhero organization to work as a dispatcher for a team of misfits. The “Z-Team” is comprised of former villains that the Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN) has brought in to rehabilitate. Your job, as Robert, is to dispatch these “heroes” each day, sending them to various calls that come into SDN and ensuring that the right hero is sent on the right mission.
This can be pretty chaotic. Heroes have to travel to and from each mission. They have to rest after each mission. They can be injured. Sometimes, all your heroes are resting or busy when a new call comes in. Other times, you have to choose between two different missions and can only choose one. You’ll level up your heroes as they succeed and earn XP, giving them increased stats in Combat or Charisma or Intellect or Mobility or Vigor. And unless you manage to get a 100% chance of success, even a mission that you choose the right heroes for can fail. Honestly, it reminds me of XCOM without the actual combat. As a huge XCOM fan, this is high praise.
Woven into this system is a hacking mini-game with increasingly challenging puzzles, some of which are timed. These start out super simple, but ramp up in difficulty as the game progresses. You guide a little ball around a grid, at first just following button prompts to move through certain sectors, but as the puzzles get harder, you’ll be navigating antivirus spheres, managing power and memorizing lock sequences. Sometimes there’s a timer.
I found myself looking forward to all three of these game modes – the superhero / workplace dramedy and its tough choices, the freneticing dispatching with this ragtag band of semi-reformed villains, and the hacking mini-game – and Dispatch does a great job at pacing each section out, so you’re never disappointed one ends and another begins. I was so hooked that I played through the first five episodes of Dispatch in a single sitting (which took roughly five to six hours, though I pretty much lost track of time).
Since the final episode of the game (which launched on October 22nd) comes out this week, I’ll be able to make a final verdict soon enough. Better yet, I’ll be able play it all over again from the beginning and make totally different choices and see how these impact the story. I know that some will completely change which heroes I have available in the dispatching missions. Others will likely alter the relationships Robert has with his co-workers – and in particular his potential love interests.
Dispatch currently has six episodes, with the final two episodes releasing Wednesday, November 12th. It’s available on PC and PlayStation 5, though hopefully developer AdHoc Studio ports the game to Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch as soon as possible. I also hope the developers seriously consider a sequel / Season 2, as this is a story that I am not ready to be done with, and I suspect many gamers feel the same. Dispatch currently holds an Overwhelmingly Positive user rating on Steam and a shockingly low 84/100 on Metacritic (brought down by some reviews that I find a bit . . . odd, to be honest, but there’s no accounting for taste).
Dispatch joins a number of other wholly original and creative video games in 2025, making this one of the best years for video games I’ve seen in a long time. Split Fiction remains one of the most inventive platformers I’ve ever played. Blue Prince is perhaps the best puzzle game I’ve played since Myst. And Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an original fantasy that brings JRPG sensibilities to Western gaming. Then we have Hollow Knight 2, Arc Raiders and so many other great games released this year, I’ve honestly lost track. What a lovely problem to have.
P.S. This is not a game for kids despite the superhero stuff. Lots of swearing and violence and some nudity/sex. Lots of raunchy humor.