The is my review of the video game Dispatch, a Telltale style game about a superhero workplace. (For those that don't know, a "Telltale style" game is basically an interactive TV show where you shape the personality of and make choices for the main character. The focus is on storytelling rather than gameplay, but there are various gameplay elements sprinkled in as well.)

Without spoiling anything, the main thing to say about Dispatch is that it's as good of a superhero story as you'll find anywhere on TV. In fact, it might have originally been written for TV, I'm not sure. But it's really good, and the fact that you get to make choices for the main character makes it even more engaging. It's also a surprisingly wholesome game. It's a superhero story that avoids a lot of the cynicism and politicization of modern media, and it actually makes you feel like you want to be a better person by the end of it. That's pretty refreshing in today's media landscape. I'll explain more in the spoiler review below.

You play as Robert Robertson, formerly the superhero Mecha Man. Your mech suit got destroyed in a battle and now you have to take on the more menial role of a superhero dispatcher. The company you work for tasks you with reforming a misfit band of former villains and turning them into a functional superhero team. The gameplay and story centers around your management of this cast of unruly characters.

Gameplay itself centers around your role as dispatcher. You respond to requests by clients and you dispatch superheroes to help them out. The trick is to match the request to the hero with the right skills. For example, if the client needs someone to break up a bar fight, send the muscular former circus strongman. But if the client needs you to investigate a bank robbery, send the highly intelligent Harvard graduate. Need to stop a runaway train? Send the traditional superman archetype. Besides matching the right heroes to the right job, you also have to factor in details like travel time, rest time, team morale, and relationships within the team. I found the dispatching gameplay surprisingly engaging, despite its simplicity.

When you're not dispatching, you follow Robert's story as he navigates workplace relationships, tries to mentor and reform misfit members of his team, and ultimately attempts to rebuild his Mecha suit and hunt down the final villain.

The thing I appreciated most about this game was its lack of cynicism. In modern media, it often feels like everyone has to be morally gray. Not so in this game. While you can roleplay Robert's personality, he is, at the end of the day, a good guy. He acts as a leader and a father figure to his team, and that leadership is not cast in a cynical light. Like a strong father, Robert has to balance discipline with compassion, and it ultimately results in the reformation of an unruly group of misfits into an effective team with strong bonds between them. At its heart, this game is a story about redemption without caveats.

The lack of cynicism is evident in the side characters as well. So often these days, characters that seem good at first are later shown to hide a dark secret, or to be secretly evil. This is so common in modern media that I was suspicious of a certain character for most of the game, waiting for the moment when they would betray me. But it didn't happen. Instead, this character actually made an unexpected heroic act of sacrifice. Modern media is so cynical that I was actually surprised when an outwardly good character is shown to be inwardly good as well. That left me with a warm feeling, and even a desire to be a better person myself. High praise for a media product in today's environment.

To sum it up: I was expecting a solid superhero story with fun action, but I wasn't expecting something this wholesome and uplifting. I gladly recommend it to anyone who likes superhero TV or likes this style of game.¹