When crime fighting IS your day job
It has been a while since we saw an interactive narrative based game, and publisher and developer AdHoc studios is swooping in to save the day with Dispatch.
In this workplace style superhero game, you play as Robert Robertson. Robert has no powers and so fights crime by piloting his robotic suit, known as Mecha Man. While looking for Shroud, the supervillain who killed Roberts father, his suit suffers catastrophic damage in a battle with Shroud and his crew, and due to not being a billionaire like some gadget reliant heroes I could mention, Robert is forced to retire from the crime fighting business.
All is not lost though as a super heroine called Blond Blazer approaches Robert with a deal, if he is willing to work as a superhero dispatcher for SDN, the company she works for, they will fund the repairs necessary to make Mecha Man fly again.
Dispatch is part narrative with quick-time events and dialogue choices, and part management in dispatching the correct heroes to the emergencies that best suit their talents. The choices you make during your dialogue sections will affect developments later in the game, but you have a limited time to decide so you have to be to be swift in making them.
The story is told over 8 episodes. At the end of each episode during the credits, you get to see how many other players picked the choices you did, which is a nice touch as I like seeing how many of you think like me. The characters are very deep and well written, some I liked or disliked instantly, while a few were hard to work out at first. The relationships you create (or burn) really grip you and keep you invested in the bigger story.
I loved the humour in Dispatch. It is very sarcastic and adult themed, yet there is not so much of it that it overpowers the rest of the game even though it is a comedy. In my opinion the instances of humour are perfectly balanced between quantity and quality, it had me giggling regularly to myself.
Working as a dispatcher keeps you on your toes as almost everything has a limited window to react in. You do get a tutorial on how to manage your team, and choose which heroes to dispatch to which problems before you officially start work. Afterwards you become the dispatcher for the Z team, a team of ex-supervillains who are trying to turn their lives around for various reasons. They don’t respect you and even make bets on how long you will last, so you really have your work cut out for you in managing them. My favourite character from the team is Malevola, a half demon sorceress.
Each hero has varying levels of competence in each of the five categories, intelligence, combat, vigor, charisma and speed. These stats can be increased with experience, but if a hero gets injured their stats will drop, so failing to send the correct hero can have multiple consequences.
You can send your heroes out in pairs if you wish to increase the chances of a successful mission, but it can leave you short handed if you are not careful. Once a hero returns from a mission they must rest for a while before they can be sent out again, and emergencies come in constantly during your shift with limited time to respond. Sometimes a hero will request help or advice while on a mission, you can send another hero to help or advise them on how to continue. Aside from the 5 stats I mentioned, you also get information on each hero to flesh them out even more such as age, height, powers and a mini bio.
Aside from dispatching, you can also hack security systems. This is a really simple mini game where you move around the system and hack different nodes by inputting the correct sequence, but as with everything you have a limited time to complete the hack. The systems you need to hack do get more complicated, needing to hack multiple nodes to advance to the final one which allows you into the device you are hacking. While it is simple it’s surprisingly fun, with the time limit providing the real challenge.
