Mdm_Thomas Dispatch Review

Wow. When this game was announced at The Game Awards by Laura Bailey and Aaron Paul, it absolutely did nothing for me. I played some Telltale games before, I knew what genre the game was but still, I didn't really felt anything. But when the first 2 episodes came out, the reaction on social media were huge and positive. I contained myself and waited all 4 weeks to pass so I could play the entire game without pause between 2 episodes. I kinda wish I didn't because the episodes endings are all cliffhangers, letting you want more. That being said, let's get to the specifics. Dispatch is an episodic, choice-based game, made by veterans and developers who worked a little while on Telltale's long awaited The Wolf Among Us 2 and other major Telltale games. So, they are familiar with the genre and they know what they are doing. Graphics: 9/10 Dispatch features a really cool visual style somewhat similar to Invincibile. It has that comic book feel that works really well with the world, environment and characters. While being a real video game, the rendering style is only fixed and prerendered videos. It can give the feeling that it's not a video game but more like a TV show. Based on what you like or care about, you may find it positive or negative. But the overall quality of image, animations, facial expressions are top notch and on par on what acclaimed animated TV shows do nowadays, Dispatch can definitely be a successful TV show by itself, without the gaming part. Story: 10/10 Superheroes stories can be tricky. That's a setting we've seen for ages in entertainment (TV shows, cinema, comics), so you can have fears on if Dispatch's story is interesting and original. Rest assured, Dispatch's story is incredible. It features Robert Robertson III ("the third ? Three times this happened ?"), a former superhero, "Mecaman", that got destroyed by an explosive device during a mission. Following this, it got approached by SDN, a superhero dispatching services company, that promised to repair his suit in exchange for his mentoring for former supervilains, the "Z-Team". Every character is this game has its own personnality, appearance, qualities and flaws (like you would expect with supervilains). The whole game is filled with jokes, humor and lovable interactions that don't feel like what we usually get in video games. All conversations really feel alive, with curse words thrown everywhere, jokes here and there, all elevated by an incredible set of voice actors, led by Critical Role. Critical Role is a team of people, best known for their narrated and played DnD campains on Twitch and YouTube, and formed by actual industry voice actors and writers. The game is actually produced in collaboration with Critical Role. Its cast is led by Aaron Paul, Laura Bailey, Erin Yvette, Travis Willingham and many more known names such as Jacksepticeye or MoistCr1TiKaL. Everyone gave an absolute masterpiece of a performance and contributed to make what Dispatch is and why it feels so special. At the start of the story, the game asks you if you want to experience it as a visual novel Gameplay: 9/10 While the game itself is only cinematics with choices, each episode features 1 or 2 segments (depending on the episode structure) of actual gameplay. This takes the form of a dispatching minigame, where you take the place of the dispatcher. You have your team of superheroes (or former supervilains), each with their abilities that matches different needs. Each call you receive has some hidden requirements for achieving a successful result. The game gives you hints in form of text with highlighted words to help you figure which superhero to send based on their skill. To have a successful call, you need to fill best the requirements, although the very last requirement is kinda as you have a % of match requirements and then the game uses that to random the outcome. It can feel frustrating when you have 80% requirements match and still fail the call because of the final random check. The game is split by "shifts", splitting the episodes in parts where you have the start of the episode being story, a first gameplay shift, more story, sometimes another shift and then the episode finale. The more you advance the story, the more you unlock new abilities and level up your heroes, the more the minigame feels addictive. To break the redundancy of the minigame, the characters actually speaks during missions, talk to or insult each other, make fun of you. It gives so much interactivity and fun to the ensemble. Some missions require active assistance from the dispatcher, by the form of small quick puzzle solving minigames. To conclude, I will say that I jumped into Dispatch without expecting anything and got absolutely blown away. I found myself replaying the game multiple times to get all endings and get the Platinum trophy. If you like choice-based games like Telltale games, you will absolutely enjoy Dispatch and I would say even if you don't like choice-based games, you will also enjoy Dispatch, that's what the game does to you.