Generally the calls routed to my desk on the Superhero Dispatch Community are fairly low-key. Cats caught up timber, that type of factor. Generally they’re extra high-stress, like hostage negotiations. And generally they’ll go both method, like when somebody hears unusual noises within the basement and thinks they’re being haunted.
This can be a world the place considered one of my group is an alien and one other is a demon. Possibly ghosts are actual too? I might hate to put in writing off somebody who seems to have Sadako of their cellar.
Dispatch is an journey recreation whose creators embrace a bunch of ex-Telltale employees, so like The Strolling Lifeless one of many essential methods it provides interactivity is with selection and consequence. Which superhero do you go on a date with? Who do you drop from the group? However the place Telltale video games additionally retained rudimentary walk-around-and-look-at-stuff scenes from their point-and-click ancestors like vestigial limbs, Dispatch ditches them in favor of being extra like an interactive cartoon—with high-quality animation and performing—till all of the sudden it drops you right into a shift working as a dispatcher. At which level a miniature administration sim falls in your lap.
Every of the heroes has stats—technically they’re reformed villains doing neighborhood service, however I consider them as heroes for the sake of morale—and every job comes with clues suggesting which stats will probably be vital. The haunted home notes it will require investigating the noises and reassuring the house owner, which implies I need to ship heroes with excessive Mind and excessive Charisma. Sadly I solely have one hero with excessive Mind and he is at present reworked right into a bat, boosting his Fight capability at the price of his brains.
As a substitute, I ship my excessive Charisma hero Prism, a type of modern-day Dazzler if she was much less disco and extra Megan Thee Stallion. For backup I throw in Golem, who’s actually a golem. He is not notably good, however he’s obtainable, and I would like to check out uncommon combos to be taught which characters have synergy—a hidden stat that reinforces their likelihood of success after they work collectively.
Usually Dispatch offers you a proportion likelihood of succeeding then rolls the cube, however some missions have a choose-your-own-adventure component. This one has a greyed-out possibility that I might have chosen if I despatched Malevola—a cross between Hellboy and Magik from the X-Males whose supernatural powers would have come in useful.
Since I did not ship her I’ve to choose between calming the house owner or investigating the pipes, and I go for the previous since I do know Charisma is my greatest stat. That seems to be a sensible choice and I cross the take a look at, incomes some XP for the 2 heroes I despatched. Although now that is two extra of my squad who must relaxation earlier than being despatched out once more, and my display screen’s filled with missions with timers ticking down.
Whereas I am completely hooked on the story of Dispatch six episodes into its eight-episode run, and determined to see how issues play out—whether or not Phenomaman will pull himself collectively, if issues will work out between me and Invisigal—each time the plot pauses to sit down me down in entrance of an historical laptop terminal and determine who will get despatched to wash up a sewage spill on the seaside, I lean ahead in my chair. I might love a standalone model, type of like the college mode in Danganronpa, that lets me proceed to work shifts on the workplace lengthy after the story ends.
