I think a lot of Dispatch can be distilled into a single moment at the beginning of the game when the player comes face to face with a penis. There it is, dangling visibly between the legs of an unclothed, toxic-drenched super-villain you’re about to fight. The camera all but centers on it. There’s no way you can miss it unless you’ve flipped the nudity switch off, in which case it’s replaced by an even more conspicuous black box that only amplifies the naughtiness of the part hidden within. But most people don’t turn nudity off because they’re expecting boobs. That’s what we usually see. In Dispatch, however, it’s a penis we see waggling unavoidably on our screens.
This is “100 percent the meta-joke” by the way – misdirecting people with a nudity slider and then showing them a penis. That’s what narrative director Pierre Shorette told me in an interview recently. He said: “Being able to see streams where people leave it on and then they’re like ‘what the fuck!’ and freak out to hit pause and turn the censors back on: it’s very funny. People are uncomfortable around dicks.” And though it’s a crude joke, it highlights how Dispatch steps beyond boundaries to do things differently.
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Here’s another example, and I’m sorry if it spoils another moment for you but, again, it’s from early in the game and of little consequence. So: there’s a superhero in the game called Phenomaman, who’s clearly modelled on Superman – a being from another planet blessed with extraordinary powers like super strength and speed, and flight, and who’s seemingly invincible – and you’ve just kissed his ex-girlfriend and you’re telling him that fact. A risky situation. He’s depressed and he could crush you like a bug – and not a hardy bug at that. You confess, then, and brace for the worst. But Phenomaman doesn’t do what a character like this probably would in 99 percent of stories like it. There’s no confrontation. Instead, he kisses you. He walks right up to you and kisses you. I don’t want to say why so as to preserve some of the mystery around it, but the reasoning is totally unexpected and inspired – two words I’d use to describe so much of Dispatch.
But the boundary-crossing goes beyond just surprising players. There’s a qualitative step here that pushes the writing and presentation closer towards something you might expect from an animated TV show, with modern, naturalistic dialogue that fizzes around and sparkles with a sense of wit. Scenes have the feeling of those rehearsed a hundred times to eke out every available gag and dramatic decorative opportunity. There’s a slickness to Dispatch I find irresistible. Moreover, there’s a game here. People often patronise experiences like these as being interactive TV only, and okay, broadly speaking, that’s the area of game we’re in. But there’s substance: a layer of strategic puzzling, of literal dispatching – sending your team of heroes on missions – that absorbed me for hours, as I tried to level up and discover new synergistic character combos.
Describing Dispatch in familiar gaming terms sells it short. To say to someone, “This is a Telltale-like episodic series about superheroes working out of an office,” makes it sound stuffy and boring. And it is far from that. Those are its gaming components, but where Dispatch is so startling, so full of verve, so colourful and entertaining, is in how it’s been brought to life. The impeccable craft of it. The humour rippled through it. It’s in the game’s pursuit of the unexpected and in our subsequent joy of surprise. Dispatch is a prismatic burst of entertainment, one I have no hesitation in recommending to everyone I know, game-literate or not, by way of showing them what games are capable of.
This article is part of our end-of-year series, Games of 2025, where we talk about great moments, great games, and our personal favourites of the year. You can read more in our Games of 2025 hub. Thank you for reading, and happy holidays!
