Title: Dispatch
Developer: AdHoc Studio
Publisher: AdHoc Studio
Release Date: October 22nd, 2025
Platforms: Steam
Reviewed on: Steam
Price: $29.99 USD

Occasionally, there’s a moment where every friend of mine: high school, college, online, and other, will message me the same thing: have you played this game? Most recently, that happened with AdHoc studio’s debut game: Dispatch. I listened to their enthusiastic praise of the game and gave it a try. I’m glad I did.

Dispatch is a Telltale-style workplace comedy about reforming a team of supervillains and deploying them to solve problems in the Los Angeles area. It’s divided into animated cutscenes with dialogue choices, as with the old Telltale games, and with an actual dispatching game mode, where you send out the best fit heroes to solve problems.

Story 

The game focuses on Robert Robertson, an Ironman-like superhero who has been spent decades working in Los Angeles. In a battle against the villain who killed his father, Shroud, Robert is sent into a coma, his suit is destroyed, and its power source, the Astral Pulse, is missing. Injured, and without his suit or the ability to recreate it, Robert is recruited by the superhero Blonde Blazer to work at the Superhero Dispatch Network, an organization that sends out heroes to protect and help people. In exchange, SDN will rebuild Robert’s suit and allow him to be Mechaman, after months of work on it. Robert is put in charge of the Z-team, an eclectic mix of supervillains who are trying to turn a new leaf.

The members include Invisigal, an asthmatic smoker who can turn invisible while holding her breath. She and Blonde Blazer serve as the main romantic interests of the story. The other members include Malevola, a demon-like woman with the power to create portals and armed with an absolute slab of a sword. Coupe is a trained assassin who wields shadowy knives. Punchup is a three-foot-tall strongman with the strength of 10 men and a classy special technique. Sonar is a half bat half man white collar criminal who transforms into a blood thirsty monster. The full roster is much larger. The character writing is excellent throughout, with all of them getting moments to have witty banter or show off their abilities.

Dispatch‘s episodic structure makes it feel close to a TV show, but the abundance of important, or at least witty, dialogue decisions made it easy to feel part of the story. Many of them revolve around how to handle your team screwing up, who to romance, and how to handle Robert’s identity. Your choices do matter significantly throughout the game, but many of them don’t become obvious until the finale. But even the smaller dialogue choices are fun to make, as they often involve good comedy and wit.

I only have a couple of complaints regarding the story. For one, the story could use more build-up before episodes 7 and 8. Without spoiling anything, the action ratchets up quickly without warning, and it’s unclear how the antagonists managed to move so quickly without warning, when the Z-team should have enough connections and ears to the ground to get some advance notice. I also noticed a lot of inconsistency in the amount of attention each character got throughout the game. Though all of them get have good moments, some had frontloaded stories that left me with false expectations. Specifically, Blonde Blazer gets a huge focus in the first episode which is not quite matched in the other episodes. However, that’s a problem inherent to any media with a large cast.

Voice Acting

The cast of Dispatch is unbelievably stacked. Most noteworthy is Aaron Paul, who excels at playing Robert Robertson. The character, through his voice, has a sense of both warmth and world-weariness.

A lot of the cast also comes from Critical Role, which worked in partnership with AdHoc on the game. From them, veteran voice actor Laura Bailey does a fantastic job making Invisigal feel sympathetic and vulnerable underneath her acerbic surface. Matt Mercer does a fantastic job as Shroud, giving him this cold, calculating edge to him, and shines the most as him in the final episode. Less crucial to the plot, Travis Willingham is hilarious as Phenomoman.

I was surprised by the inclusion of many popular YouTubers including JackSepticEye as Punch Up, and Moistcritical as Sonar. Both hold their own against the more seasoned actors, though don’t expect much difference in their voice and tone from their normal selves. I was also surprised to see Yung Gravy’s name in the credits as Gollum, as well as the artist Thot Squad playing Prism (and being the creator of the song that plays in a bar fight in the fifth episode.)  

Gameplay

The actual gameplay of Dispatch is narrow, but well executed. The main game sequences involve dispatching your team to handle different situations, prioritizing sending the best fit heroes for the job. This plays well, and is a lot of fun. Once I became familiar with the basic formula of dispatching, I was pleased to see some variations in each additional episode based on the mood of the team and the state of Los Angeles.

Some of the other mechanics don’t shine nearly as well. QuickTime events feel exciting in the moment but are undermined with how little they affect events. In service of story, many of the outcomes are the same regardless of how well you perform in combat. That being said, they are especially well done in the middle episodes. Some of the other mechanics, such as the hacking minigame, feel very flimsy. The hacking levels are either trivial or completely unintuitive, even after several runs. The actual fantasy of hacking into a system is not always sold all that well. This is especially true with electricity mechanics, which it’s unclear what shocking an antivirus is supposed to represent. Thankfully, you’re not always forced to engage with the mechanic.  

As your heroes gain more experience, they gain skill points. I appreciated how strategic this system felt when combined with the various abilities of characters. Some, such as Golem, felt like a good target for an even mix of points across a few categories, while others felt more appropriate to specialize.

My only complaint is that I didn’t get to dispatch Mechaman at any point.

Final Score (5 out of 5 Stars)

Dispatch is a fantastic telltale style game. While it does have a very linear story, the narrative is of such a high caliber that I found myself replaying the game just to experience the permutations within that limit. The game’s sense of humor, excellent character work, and interesting dilemmas all make it well worth the playthrough. This is my personal choice for Game of the Year. Though that win isn’t guaranteed, it will doubtless get many other awards. And given the game’s success, hopefully we’ll get a season two. 

What about you? Do you think Dispatch deserves to be Game of the Year? Let us know on the Boss Rush Facebook Group or our Boss Rush Discord.

Featured Image: AdHoc Studios

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