I never thought my game of the year would involve working as an office dispatcher

Looking back on 2025, I fully expected to be writing about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as my game of the year. Beautiful, tear-jerking, unforgettable — and that’s just the soundtrack. Still, due to its lack of navigation tools and unrelenting yet uber-satisfying combat, it’s admittedly taken me longer to gel with.

Another honourable mention goes to The Outer Worlds 2, or Fallout in space, if you’d rather. Ticking off kooky sidequests with the help of deep, open-ended gameplay, polished combat and hilarious dialogue choices is the perfect panacea after enjoying the latest season of Fallout on TV.

Nope, rather than adventuring to battle a cosmic deity or saving an entire solar system from annihilation, another vocation has commandeered my thumbs, one involving a far more mundane reality — office logistics, courtesy of the game Dispatch.

Created by AdHoc Studio, Dispatch has you playing as superhero Robert Robertson, the alter ego of Mecha Man, now powerless and grounded after his Gundam-esque robotic suit sustains heavy damage. But it’s not long before superhero firm SDN swoops him up to help mentor and send out enhanced individuals to complete missions ranging from foiling bank robberies to fetching coffee for fans. 

It’s a narratively rich adventure that feels like the next stage of evolution for the popular Telltale Games titles, the developers of which went on to found AdHoc after Telltale’s shuttering.

Play

Z-listers

The game’s kicker is that you’re not babysitting some goody two-shoe superheroes, but reformed criminals affectionately known as the Z-Team, so you’re in for a lot of egos, negative attitudes and pushback as soon as you clock in. 

One major gameplay feature is its addictive dispatch minigame, which sees you assigning heroes to jobs according to their skills to maximise your chances of a successful mission. As you progress, you’ll deal with a multitude of emergencies that require careful resource balancing, micromanagement and just making do with what you have. In one shift, you might be dealing with a depressed supe reeling from a breakup, while in another, you’ll have heroes rushing to missions without authorisation and sabotaging each other to avoid being cut from the team.

But your compatriots’ skills grow as you become accustomed to their strengths and foibles, making these once hostile individuals warm to you on and off the clock as they start to thrive from their heroics.

Outside shifts, you’re choosing dialogue threads and actions that might aid or alienate your coworkers, shaping the heroes they’ll end up becoming. It also helps that these characters are utterly captivating, with some of the best writing I’ve encountered in a videogame, which feels sharp and witty without resorting to overly predictable corniness (looking at you, MCU: Phase 5) or toilet humour (The Boys).

Breaking bad guys

The voice cast is also excellent, thanks to Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul as our cynical yet dry protagonist, along with voiceover royalty Laura Bailey, Jeffrey Wright and Matt Mercer in support. 

Some moments had me chuckling in glee, while the awkward niceties, stolen glances and arguments about office food manage to ground Dispatch in an entirely believable reality about the background support and dull bureaucracy needed so that superheroes can pay rent. The animation is also top tier, with a clean, cell-shaded aesthetic that draws heavily from modern comic books.

The game isn’t perfect, admittedly, as your dispatcher prowess doesn’t feed into the main narrative, and the hacking minigame gets a bit tiresome quickly. Even so, I can’t wait to dive back in again and see where different choices lead me with my newfound work family. And getting 100% success on all the missions feels much more approachable thanks to its episodic format. 

Plus, I’m disabling the fast-paced quicktime events on my next run so I can drink in the glorious animation without looking for my next button prompt. Playing Dispatch feels like a breath of fresh air amid a glut of live service games and 120-hour scrawling RPGs. It’s a game that’s all about redemption and finding your identity again after unforeseen circumstances upend your life.

I’m hyped for the all-but confirmed season two already. What superhero fatigue?