3.5/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Dispatch.

Telltale Games is a studio that holds a special place in my heart, especially the early games they created such as The Wolf Among Us and the first season of The Walking Dead. Not that these games are masterpieces or anything, but between their decent writing and episodic formula, Telltale made games that felt unique. After Telltale shut down midway through the final season of The Walking Dead I never really expected them to recover, especially with most of those original developers gone and The Wolf Among Us 2 seemingly in development hell. But when I heard that a lot of those same Telltale developers were making a new game from a newly formed studio, I was immediately intrigued. Dispatch is spiritually a Telltale game through and through and is proof that the Telltale formula still works. I really enjoyed my time with Dispatch, it's not perfect unfortunately, but it is entertaining. One thing I was really worried about was the voice cast, when it was announced they got a bunch of YouTubers and other non-acting celebrities to voice a lot of these characters I was concerned. Usually that's a sign that whatever is releasing isn't going to be very good, but I'm glad I was proven wrong. It is a little distracting at first hearing a lot of these voices that I grew up listening to trying their best to act, but honestly I found they all did a really good job and I'd imagine that has a lot to do with the direction and writing. The story here is genuinely good too, albeit a little played out by this point, but it still did enough different to keep me hooked. Unfortunately I do have quite a few complaints and a lot of it has to do with structure and the characters. Throughout the entire game I was waiting for more characters to have their scene to add more personality to them but it really doesn't happen for most of them. Sure, the main characters are pretty well developed, but that's because they get so much screentime compared to everyone else. Almost all of the side characters on your roster never really get too much development and it sucks because a lot of this game relies on you caring for these people when you're never really given a reason to because the game doesn't give you enough time to know them. The most egregious example of this has to be the main villain, Shroud, who just doesn't get a whole lot of screentime until the very end. Shroud is honestly forgotten for most of the episodes and I really wish there was more build up to the eventual confrontation between Robert and Shroud as it made a lot of the final episode feel underwhelming. I would have really loved more time to be spent with these characters throughout the episodes instead of just toward the beginning and end of each episode. Speaking of Episodes, nearly every episode is too short for my liking, a lot of the episodes boil down to you doing the Dispatch gameplay until a cutscene appears. Instead of getting 8 short episodes I would have preferred getting 4-5 meatier episodes. The actual Dispatch gameplay is all over the place too, I know a lot of people didn't really mind it but I didn't personally enjoy it until the last couple of episodes when you're given more to do. A lot of it consists of just guessing and luck, which honestly wasn't all too engaging. It does the job, but I really wish they took a different route with the gameplay, especially with the hacking minigames. The other gameplay consists of the classic Telltale dialogue options that supposedly effect your outcome. I say supposedly because pretty much no matter what you do you just get a variation of the same outcome with slight differences. That's always been a gripe of mine with Telltale games, and it's very much present here too. I don't usually care about overusing swears and other obscenities, but this game really relies on you finding the word "fuck" really funny. There's only so many different masturbation or dick jokes you can make before it becomes unfunny and Dispatch takes those jokes to the extreme. I'm sure most people won't really care, but I was somewhat annoyed by how often this game replaces actual dialogue with "shit" or "fuck" randomly. Overall I really enjoyed my time with Dispatch, I know it probably doesn't sound like it because I spent so much time focusing on the negatives, but It really is a good game. I know for a fact The Wolf Among Us 2 probably isn't happening anymore, so I really hope Adhoc continues with these games for the foreseeable future.