Dispatch

This might be a bit of a controversial take, given how popular this product is, and the amount of awards it's gotten. There are some really good things here, but there are also unfortunately some pretty bad things in my opinion. Animation, art, voice acting. These are all things that are 10s across the board. If more games got these things as right as Dispatch does... I'd be hella broke. The problem is really everything else: Dispatch, on the one hand, is more of a visual novel with interactive elements than an actual game. The problem is it's not the best VN out there because the elements that lend to a good VN aren't very strong here. On the other hand, the elements that lend to a good game aren't very strong either because you don't get enough of it. It's a bit of a marketing issue, I think many of the negative reviews didn't understand what they were buying, but I feel like there's a bit of an identity issue in the game itself, too. For the VN side - Choices don't seem to matter that much ultimately. Sure, if you're a buttface all the time, you'll get a bad (?) ending, but making a few different key choices doesn't seem to change things that much. Whether you kiss one of the girls in the beginning or not, they act the same way about it later on, for example. Choosing bad things in some situations also doesn't seem to change much. - The romance elements in the game are severely lacking IMO. You have a choice between two girls, and the setting is very much that you're choosing between a good girl and a bad girl (she can turn good tho). If you don't like either one (I didn't), you can choose to not go with either one, but it's a bit of a shame since there were other more interesting characters. Can you imagine dating Royd, the big puppy, instead of either one of the girls, for example? I feel like that would've been a much more fun dynamic, not to mention pretty much any other member of the team. Also, the game sort of treats it as though you're pursuing both of the romantic interests up until one specific event later on in the game which feels kind of off if you've never shown any interest in one from the get go. - There's pretty much zero replay value specifically because your choices don't make a huge difference, I personally found it difficult to like either one of the romance interests that much, and then, most importantly, you CANNOT skip dialogue or cutscenes. I have 22 hours on this game after finishing it twice, and much of that is being stuck re-watching cutscenes. Especially because sometimes I wanted to do a bad Dispatch shift again, and then that meant having to rewatch a bunch of stuff, redo hacking etc (which I understand is what the game wants to discourage, but because replaying is such a hassle...) My second playthrough, I ended up turning all interactivity off so that when the cutscenes were playing, I could play a game on my phone while I waited. The game has quick time chat events where you have to make a choice within a short amount of time, so you can't wander off to do something else while stuff is playing. - The story and the characters aren't... I'm not going to say they're not interesting because there's a lot of characters I would like to learn more about, but you can't. The story is very set, there's not that much you can do about it. Maybe doing an even more evil playthrough than I did would change things, but I'll never know because they made replay so painful, I'll probably realistically never want to touch the game again. --> Also note that the story has some fairly severe inconsistencies. You're tasked with turning around a team of heroes with many failures, but then you immediately have to cut someone. You can even express that it's not a good idea, but apparently your opinion in that doesn't mean anything, but then supposedly you're the expert on judging which member has to go even though you've known them for all of 5 seconds. For the actual game side - There's essentially two minigames, one of which is dispatching (this is fun, and wish there was more of it), and the other was hacking (which I personally didn't enjoy). Hacking felt quite disjointed from the story and the rest of the game, and felt more of an extra thing that was thrown in an effort to create more interaction. Meanwhile, I had been under the impression that dispatching would be a bigger part of the game than it was which was a shame since that was a really fun. - Having quick events during cutscenes, essentially clicking and clicking and dragging at the right time / in the right direction, I personally don't think that's something that makes a game very interactive. Coming from an educational background, it often happens that if students are anticipating something they need to do well at, they end up paying less attention to what's going on until they have to act. That's true even for neurotypical kids, much less neurodivergent ones. On the one hand, interactivity can improve concentration, but on the other hand, it can also cause other things to fade out if not done correctly. Think students having to read aloud from a book, with every single one of them doing the math of which sentence is going to be theirs to read, and then focusing solely on mastering that bit. For both - I think the final note is going to be that at 30 euros, you genuinely get about 9-10 hours of gameplay. If you can stomach playing it a second time, that's a bit better, but I'm not so sure even masochists would be a able to do a third playthrough. For me, I don't personally really consider that good value. It's not highway robbery, don't get me wrong, but it's also not great.

No idea what the hype is all about. This is basically a short animated film, vaguely interactive, for american teenagers. 90% of the humor is swear words and jokes revolving around sex, feces and alcohol. You dispatch a team of misfits with a mono-personality, all talking and behaving the same, from the ponzi scammer to the demon from hell. Dispatching apparently meaning playing the role of a big brother trying to get the bad, naughty naughty villains to reform. Apart from your romance options, none of their backstories or personalities are really explored. I'm probably just not the right target for the game, but it sat at the top of my wishlist so long due to the stellar reviews that I expected much, much more. There are far better narrative heavy games to play IMO.

Your choices don't matter. There are 2 scene differences between the love interest (movie theatre / dinner outside of work). Neither of which has an effect on the story. Took about ~6 hours to complete first playthrough and did it again just to see choice variation, which was a waste of time. You don't have to do any dispatch or interact with the 'action' sequences successfully, you can literally just let it all sit and do nothing. These only exist to compare to playthroughs from other players. This was basically a $20 season of tv that felt like it could have been from the Invincible tv series universe but with all different characters. (obviously) It was still a decent story though I just wish I had watched it on YouTube and saved the $. I don't know anything about the developers but you guys should drop whatever you're trying to do with making "video games" and reach out to Netflix. I'll watch "Season 2" of Dispatch, but there's zero chance I'm paying for this 'video game' experience again.

This has been another solid "meh" game, and considering the lack of a side-thumb option, I'll give it a thumbs down as too many have given it positive reviews already. I'll focus on what I did not like: Just like in 'Yes, Your Grace', for a game that focuses purely on story, there was a dearth of major choices. There are games which are far less cinematic that have far more branching paths that actually matter. Additionally, there were too many story points or dialogues that were absurd, added only for dramatic effect. For example, the very first scene where we have a super-villain tied up, conversing with the main character like deepest of friends just to create an atmosphere for the opening scene, which then quickly shifts to him screaming like the madman he is; and then later, bizzarely, we find out that the guy is powerful enough that he shouldn't even have been tied up. Now, the smart ones among you would say, "But that was their plan.." and I'd not disagree. But it was a dumb plan. And thats the essence of the next point. The story, is not very well thoughtout. For such a technically and graphically well made game, there deserved to be a much better story. The delinquent dialogues from pretty much everybody (not just the delinquents), and constant sex jokes give the impression that someone at the top of some of these studios (and not just game studios but also TV studios), have been convinced that modern audience cannot pay attention to any dialogue unless there are words like 's*x, d**k, p***sy, f**k, a*s, b**ch, a**hole' etc. in it. Sadly being subject of such writing makes me feel my braincells dying. In conclusion, while I would like games like these to be made, I'd only bother playing if the story, writing and choices were much better.