I had access to Dispatch pre-release on Steam, but never got around to finishing it. I’m over episodic releases and early access projects at this point. I usually just wait until a game is at 1.0, or all episodes and chapters have launched, unless, of course, I need to play something for work. With Dispatch, I thought I’d wait until everything was out before playing more. The timing for the season finale or final episode wasn’t great for me, with other deadlines soon. When the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 ports were announced, I thought I’d finally hold off and play Dispatch to review the port, and here we are.
While Dispatch does let you start from any episode with a warning about spoilers and random choices being made if you skip ahead, I decided to replay it from the beginning on Switch 2 for this review. I did this in a single weekend over three sittings, and having the freedom to not only play as much or as little as I wanted, but also spend most of my time with it in handheld mode using touch controls has made me glad I waited to experience the entirety of Dispatch on Switch 2.
Before getting to the port and how it feels compared to Dispatch on Steam or PS5, I want to cover the game itself. Dispatch feels like a blend of a superhero sitcom, management simulation, and an adventure game. The management section isn’t the focus of the experience, but you will have one or a few of those sections in each episode.
You play as Robert Roberston, previously a superhero called Mecha Man, but now a dispatcher in an organization involving villains who are now trying to make a positive impact on the world after being caught. Dispatch blends in workplace drama, comedy, and some romance, featuring an eclectic cast that I ended up liking a lot, despite some characters not getting as much time to shine.
Dispatch is split up into eight episodes with their own choices that change how certain parts of the ending play out, or even the fate of certain characters. These choices are usually timed, while there are others that happen during the dispatching simulation sections. Beyond just making choices and consequences, you also have the aforementioned simulation management sections and some hacking mini-games. Expect to take about 9 or 10 hours to finish a single playthrough.
While I love Dispatch’s general aesthetic, what originally drew me to it was Malevola’s character design and being told I’d enjoy the game a ton by folks I trust. Well, they were right, and I still think Malevola’s design and animation work is excellent. Design aside, I was curious how I’d find the flow of the narrative and character development over a whole playthrough that takes less than a dozen hours. I’m a bit disappointed that not every character had their time to shine here. I’m not sure if there are any plans for DLC or side stories, but maybe the team wants me to read the Deluxe Edition comics included within Dispatch. AdHoc Studio delivered on what I’d expect from a good superhero and comedy TV series over the course of the runtime. It doesn’t do anything mindblowing with its writing, but this is exactly what I needed for a nice weekend break in between long RPGs.
When I play games like Dispatch, or even older ones like Life is Strange and Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us, I usually do one playthrough where I make choices I think would give me a good ending, and then a second playthrough where I make the choices I personally would make. This isn’t an ideal way to play these sorts of games, but I’ve been doing that for so long that I stick to tradition. Dispatch’s consequences in my second playthrough and branching paths ended up being better than I expected so far, and a lot better than some other games in the genre, but you do feel like you’re railroaded into specific things regardless of the choice outside. I’ll see how I feel after completing a full second run later in the week.
Dispatch’s “gameplay” sections involve you managing your team of heroes and responding to requests or crimes in the city on a map. These are timed, and you need to send appropriate heroes based on their skills for a specific task. Once a task is completed, a skill check takes place involving some RNG, where it will be decided if your hero succeeded or failed. A success results in gaining experience and potentially leveling up across a specific attribute, while failure can end up in a hero being downed for that specific dispatch shift. You can also send multiple heroes together, boosting your chance at success, but there are some late-game moments with forced fail checks for specific attributes that annoyed me quite a bit.
The hacking mini-game requires Robert to sometimes solve a puzzle involving a grid of nodes with enemies chasing you in some cases, while having to input passwords using the d-pad. You are tasked with remembering password fragments sometimes for use later on. I thought the hacking mini-game had a nice difficulty curve for the first two-thirds of Dispatch, but the challenge quickly spiked, and I ended up getting very annoyed at one of the hacking puzzles towards the end.
I get why the developer wanted to try and keep the dispatching simulation and management gameplay fresh, but a lot of the tweaks to this or the hacking later on feel poorly thought out and end up just being difficulty spikes or feel tacked on, in the case of the forced fail checks or skill gates.
A lot is said about how decisions usually don’t matter in adventure games like this or that the gameplay doesn’t feel like it affects the outcome, but Dispatch’s biggest fumble for the latter is the actual act of dispatching, only really punishing you or having some sort of challenge that matters in the finale. I won’t say more to avoid spoilers for the narrative, but I hope a patch makes it so you have to actually care about how you play in these sections early on, rather than getting a jump scare at the end to have to pay attention and do well.
Visually, I love Dispatch and would buy an artbook in a heartbeat. I already said Malevola (the half demon) has one of my favorite designs in the game, but I basically have no complaints with the varied designs for the main cast and even minor characters you may not see beyond a single episode. Dispatch has colorful and strong art throughout, and it is all accompanied by slick animation work. My only complaint with the visuals is that the actual video footage for the TV-show scenes isn’t a high enough bitrate to look good on my 4K or 1440p monitor. This is a problem on PS5 and Steam as well. I hope a potential high-bitrate video pack will be made available as a download in the future. The Switch 2 Edition does look great when played in Handheld mode, though.
The voice acting in Dispatch is mostly great. This might be a “me problem,” but I like hearing voice actors do more than just their normal voices because I already sometimes associate those with other characters or media. Barring that, Dispatch’s audio design is superb, and this carries into the game’s original score from Andrew Arcadi, with memorable songs like “Shift_Z” and “Fvck the Stars” in addition to the plethora of licensed music used throughout. I know there’s a setting to disable licensed music for streaming, but you’d really be missing out by not having a few of these songs playing where they do in-game. I love it when games that use licensed music introduce me to new artists, as has been the case with every Forza Horizon game’s Horizon Pulse radio station, and Dispatch got me into Bershy and Channel Tres.
Speaking of the setting, this brings me to a bizarre issue with the Nintendo platform launch for Dispatch. While the PS5 and Steam versions have a third setting for visual censorship, this setting appears to be forced on in the Switch and Switch 2 versions. It has been confirmed to me that this is how the game will be on launch day as well. The censorship works the same way it does on PS5/Steam when you enable the option where there is a black rectangle over any remote nudity, but the Switch platform release also appears to censor moments like someone flipping the bird as well. This confused me, but that is how it is in the game version I played (1.0.4). I’ve included a comparison below, meant to only show the censorship and not the actual quality of the scenes or resolution.
Barring that annoyance, Dispatch on both the original Switch and Switch 2 having touchscreen support has been fantastic. I hope a future patch can increase the touch targets for some items, but I appreciate this option being added to the game because I always love being able to play games like this on Switch, using touch controls in handheld and traditional button controls when docked.
The censorship doesn’t affect the story per se, but it is quite distracting. If it had to be forced on Nintendo platforms, I wish it had been done in a more elegant way rather than just having a black rectangle over parts of some scenes across different episodes. Barring that, my main complaint with Dispatch is that the gameplay segments don’t really matter until the finale. I wish they played a more important part across the narrative throughout. I still really enjoyed my time with the game across all the episodes and have already been making good progress on my second playthrough, but these aspects hold Dispatch back from its true potential.
If you haven’t bought Dispatch yet and are wondering where you’d get the best experience right now, my picks are the PS5 version for TV play and the Steam version on Steam Deck OLED for portable play. I was hoping the Switch 2 version would be the best way to play this on the go, but it isn’t right now. Forced filtering aside, it is still worth your time if you only play on Switch 2 or don’t have a Steam Deck.
Dispatch feels right at home on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, perfectly suiting portable play with touch controls. While I would’ve enjoyed playing the episodes and discussing them with friends back in November, I’m glad I finally got to see it through to the end on my own terms over a weekend. While the forced visual censorship is unfortunate on both Switch systems, my major issues with Dispatch right now lie in how the gameplay sections don’t feel as well integrated into the narrative until the finale, and also the video bitrate. Now, release an artbook, physical release, and print versions of the in-game comics, please.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by AdHoc Studio
