As a big old superhero nerd and a fan of Telltale’s narrative adventure games of old, it’s fair to say that Dispatch piqued my interest when it made its episodic arrival on PC and PS5 last year. Still, I took a punt and held back on purchasing because it simply had to be coming to Switch at some point in the future. Well, Jim of the past, come to Switch consoles it has.
Coming from AdHoc Studio, formed by four former Telltale employees in 2018 in the hopes of capturing the episodic magic they had with the likes of The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands, Dispatch drew me in with top-notch writing, stellar voice work and a visual style that’d look right at home in an animated TV drama and didn’t let me go until I reached its ‘season finale’. It’s not going to pick up any prizes in the gameplay department, but Dispatch is every bit as wonderful on Switch 2 as I hoped it would be.
Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Docked)
The game follows Robert Robertson, aka Mecha Man, an Iron Man-type man-in-a-suit (bar the billion-dollar backing) who, after his robo-suit is dramatically ripped from his clutches, is offered the chance to lead a rag-tag band of villains-on-the-mend at the Superhero Dispatch Network.
Right from the jump, you’ll notice a fair few influences. There are shades of the ‘super hero loses his powers’ trope we’ve seen countless times before, and the team of reformed villains, the ‘Z-Team’, naturally brings the likes of Suicide Squad or Thunderbolts to mind. There’s also more than a touch of Invincible in some of the visual stylings and adult themes. But through all of that noise, Dispatch manages to feel fresh.
It’s only right I shout out the writing first, because this script rules. The quips and sight gags kept me giggling throughout, but damn, I did not expect these characters to get half as much development as they do. Folks were quickly drawn to the heroes’ undeniable good looks at launch (in fairness, they are all outrageously sexy), but it’s their personalities — their growth as people, not just heroes — that make them far more interesting than a set of chiselled abs.
Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Docked)
Take Chase, Robert’s childhood babysitter, whose super-speed abilities have sped up his ageing process, rendering him an old man before hitting 40. He’s as potty-mouthed as anyone — if the 18+ age rating wasn’t enough of a giveaway, this is not a game for little ears — but underneath that rough exterior, there’s a real sense of pain and fear of reaching a premature expiration date.
Across all eight episodes, I became equally attached to Invisigirl and she struggled to put her past behind her, Phenomaman and his post-break-up spiralling, and Blonde Blazer with her desire to do right, regardless of the cost. If it sounds rather grown-up, that’s because it is.
Select cartoon superhero media like Invincible or 2019’s Harley Quinn have juxtaposed child-friendly visuals with gore, sex and swearing, and Dispatch similarly wears its convention-defiance on its sleeve. Indeed, the first episode wastes no time dropping some f-bombs, discussing dead dads and throwing some full-frontal in there for good measure.
Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld/Undocked)
The Switch 2 version mostly stays true to this edgy vision, with some caveats which might water down the experience for some. The ‘Visual Censorship’ setting from the PS5 and PC release — which gives you the option to cover any rude bits with an obnoxious censor bar — isn’t present here. From private parts to middle fingers, everything is automatically covered with no option to remove. A particularly steamy scene at the start of episode four also takes place in complete silence, whether you have the ‘Profanity Censorship’ toggle on or not.
Personally, I don’t think this takes anything away from the experience; the scenes still exist, just with a few strange bars with often-hilarious placements, but it’s odd that we can’t choose to remove the restrictions. I reached out to AdHoc to ask why the setting had been removed and was told the following:
Different platforms have different content criteria, and submissions are evaluated individually. For our Switch release, we worked with Nintendo to adapt certain elements so Dispatch could be on their platform.
Of course, the writing was on the wall for this one all along (we noted the game’s ‘censored’ eShop artwork back in December). Yet, if Cyberpunk’s *ahem* detailed character customisation can slip through uncensored, I don’t understand why Dispatch is forced to make omissions.
Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Docked)
The plot remains untouched, mind you, which is great, because my love of the characters is the driving force behind my decision-making. Much like the team’s back catalogue, Dispatch lives and dies on its dialogue trees. Some options are inconsequential, but the vast majority are met with a little message in the top corner of the screen as a reminder that my choice, good or bad, will have consequences.
I’ve played the game through twice now, intentionally making different choices on my second playthrough to see just how much sway they held. Certain story beats are set in stone, but I was pleased to see just how much influence I held over the journey; even the less important decisions rewarded me with some cracking unique dialogue for taking the path less travelled.
That dialogue really sings thanks to one of the most stacked voice casts in recent memory. Everyone from Hollywood big hitters like Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad, BoJack Horseman) and Jeffrey Wright (Boardwalk Empire, Westworld), to YouTube stars MoistCr1TiKaL and jacksepticeye is involved. The immensely popular D&D wizards at Critical Role — Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham and Matt Mercer — are also part of the cast.
Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld/Undocked)
In short, you won’t be bored during the cutscenes. And that’s good, because Dispatch has a lot of them. Dialogue tree cinematics are broken up by your dispatching work at the SDN offices, where the game turns into something vaguely reminiscent of a management sim. Calls come in with different skill requirements, and it’s up to you to pick the right hero for the job.
Successfully completing jobs lets you enhance your heroes’ skills to have more control over the situations you’re putting them in, and you can even train them to learn unique abilities. I soon began to mould the team to my liking, utilising unlocked skills rather than base abilities to answer more calls and shift the odds in my favour. Suffice to say, I became far more engaged in the call-outs’ tactics than I expected.
Dispatching heroes with controller inputs is a little fiddly and feels more suited to a mouse and keyboard — Mouse Mode is not available in the Switch 2 version — but I soon settled into the rhythms of using the D-pad to select a call/hero. Luckily, touch controls have been implemented for handheld play, which is a nice touch.
Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld/Undocked)
Short ‘hacking’ minigames also appear while Robert is on call, tasking him with moving through a virtual maze without being caught/timed out. While it lacks the depth of the hero management side, it was a welcome change whenever I got tired of comparing the team’s mobility and vigour.
But the beautifully animated story sequences are the real meat here. You can opt to play in either ‘Cinematic’ or ‘Interactive’ modes, the latter of which includes some mostly-pointless quick-time events for you to input in select combat sequences. It’s a fine enough way of breaking up the watching, if that’s your cup of tea, but I quickly turned them off to just watch the action play out instead. After all, how often can you say that you’ve ‘binged’ a game?
And just as a final brief note on performance, it all plays swimmingly on Switch 2. I wouldn’t expect something like this to be too demanding on Nintendo’s latest, of course, but a stable 60fps went a long way to convincing me that I was tucking into a juicy TV show.
Conclusion
Thanks to the sublime writing, fantastic voiceovers, and a level of animation you’d usually expect from a big-budget streaming series, Dispatch is the kind of superhero drama that draws you in with the sexy characters and funny one-liners, and hooks you until the bitter end with the potential of its ever-changing arcs.
The lack of any visual censorship options on Switch is a strange one, and some will undoubtedly find things lacking in the gameplay department, but I’m already gearing myself up for a potential ‘season 2’. It won’t be for everyone, but if you’re like me and it clicks, it really clicks. Is it too soon for a ‘rewatch’?
