Dispatch Review: HR’s Having a Heart Attack.

2025 has been a spectacular year for indie gaming.
Games from smaller studios like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 captured the attention and hearts of gamers everywhere.
Clair Obscur (deservedly) won Game of the Year, so that is proof enough.
One of the games released by a smaller studio later in the year was Dispatch, a superhero comedy in the vein of Telltale.
This description was enough to sell me on it and, after completing my first playthrough, I can say it is well worth the money.

I highly recommend this game is you are a Telltale fan.

Dispatch follows Robert Robertson The Third (Yes, that is his actual name), the superhero Mecha-Man.
After his suit is destroyed, Robert is left driftless, until superheroes Blonde Blazer (Erin Yvette) and Track Star (Jeffrey Wright) come to him with an offer: Work as a dispatch worker, coordinating a team of former super villains turned heroes, and they will help him rebuild his suit.
And so, Robert has to work to transform the Z-Team from a group of combative, squabbling children, into heroes the public can trust.

The Z Team are all great characters, but the HR Department’s worst nightmare.

Each of the characters you dispatch are interesting in their own way, from the Crypto-Man-Bat, Sonar (MoistCri1tiKaL), to shortie Irishman, Punch Up (Jacksepticeye), to the rebel Invisigal (Laura Bailey).
The latter in particular takes center stage, with the player’s decisions determining how Robert’s relationships with both her and Blonde Blazer progresses.
All of the performances for these characters are great, especially Aaron Paul’s as Robert.
Usually whenever I hear him in a voice-acting role, I associate his character with the actor.
For Robert, however, he felt completely his own person, showing how good of a job Aaron Paul did for this game from the serious moments to the humorous ones.
Speaking of the humor, this game can be incredibly funny, and I broke out into laughter multiple times.
Probably one of my favourite jokes was delivered by Prism (Thot Squad) in a bar fight.

But enough about the characters, what about the choices?
Dispatch does have quite a few after, all.
Well, overall, the story does not change too drastically.
The current end point of a few characters changes depending on your choices, along with who Robert decides to romance but, otherwise, the storyline is generally the same.
That being said, the quality of the story more than makes up for it.
One thing Dispatch has over Telltale though is its gameplay.
Dispatch’s is strategy based, with you sending different combinations of heroes on different missions and then leveling their stats with their successes while learning from their failures.
After Episode One, I thought this would make the gameplay a bit of a chore, but Dispatch quickly proved me wrong.
The banter between the characters, the time limits to send characters on missions, the suspense over whether I had made the right choices, and even the sheer randomness of outcomes created a lot of fun moments, even if I did a really good job one episode and a terrible one the next.

Who knew dispatching heroes could be this fun?

All in all, Dispatch is a great time.
The story is fun and often hilarious, the choices, while not incredibly impactful, are cool to see play out in the moment, and the gameplay is engaging.
I really hope we get a Season Two because I want to see the continuation of Robert’s story, alongside his dispatch team.

Spider-Man 2 Review: Being Stronger Togethor.

One of my favourite games of 2018 was Insomniac’s Spider-Man.
It felt fantastic to swing around New York as the titular web-swinger, fighting criminals and saving people.
Along with this, the game also had one of my favourite Spider-Man stories put to screen, with the emotional impact of one scene even making me tear up.
The game’s sequel, Miles Morales was also a lot of fun with its new combat features.
So, needless to say, I was incredibly excited for Spider-Man 2, especially with the reveal that the main antagonist would be Venom, my favourite Spider-Man villain from when I was a kid.
Having now completed the game, I can definitely say that Spider-Man 2 was worth the wait.

*Spider-Man 2* delivers a strong Symbiote story.

The game centers around the return of Peter Parker’s (Yuri Lowenthal) friend Harry Osborn (Graham Philips).
Supposedly cured of his illness thanks to an entity known as the Symbiote, Harry aims to heal the world with Peter, fulfilling his deceased mother’s dream.
However, this plan has to take a backseat with the arrival of Kraven the Hunter (Jim Pirri), a man who begins capturing and hunting the super powered individuals of New York in the hopes of finding an equal.

This leads to the release of Martin Li (Stephen Oyoung), who Miles (Nadji Jeter) pursues to seek justice for his murdered father.
Spider-Man’s intial battles with Kraven also leads to him gaining the Symbiote, as Spider-Man 2 produces its own version of the famous storyline, and does it exceptionally well.
I loved how this game handled the Symbiote’s influence over Peter, with Yuri Lowenthall giving an excellent performance as the corrupted Peter
As for the game’s villains, Kraven is both a big threat and also has an interesting motive, which results in a great ending for him, story-wise.
And then there is Venom (Tony Todd) and, I have got to say, Insomniac knocked it out of the park with their version of him.
Not only is Tony Todd excellent as the voice of Venom, but there are also a lot of great surprises surrounding this depiction, which I will not spoil.

Venom’s first appearance in the game is epic.

So Peter Parker’s story with the Symbiote suit is excellent, as are the depictions of Kraven and Venom but what about Miles?
Well, his storyline with Martin Li is also one of the best in the entire game, with the way it ends being especially poignant.
Unfortunately, apart from this storyline, Miles does not really have anything interesting going on in this game.
Not to say that the rest of his content was bad, but it did pale in significance to the rest of the story, with Miles feeling just like he was along for the ride in the third act.
This was especially apparent with his role in the final boss fight and the ridiculous looking suit he constructs for no reason.

This “Miles Morales original” is just hilarious to look at, and not in a good way.

Speaking of boss fights, this is where my review turns back to being positive because the bosses in this game are a massive improvement over the first two.
There are so many great battles in this game, from the Lizard, to Kraven, to Venom.
My two favourites are ones I cannot spoil but, for me, they were the highlights of my playtime;
a playtime which, unfortunately, ceased recently.
While I do love the main story, I personally found the post game content to be kind of lacking compared to the first game.
A lot of the side missions are great but they are pretty easily completed, leaving not much left for me to do, apart from maybe start a new playthrough.

On the plus side, I am confident that a lot of the side missions we get in this game are building to DLC content.

My time with Spider-Man 2 was still a lot of fun though, with a lot of great fighting mechanics and an easy to use leveling up system.
My only criticism surrounding the game’s combat is that it just felt a bit too easy at times.
By the end of my playthrough, I had not died for hours, practically steamrolling every fight with my overpowered abilities, which left little use for stealth.
The only part of the game where stealth is really essential are the Mary-Jane (Laura Bailey) sections, which make their return.
Thankfully these sections are much better than they were in the first game, with one chase scene Mary-Jane has being especially thrilling.

The Mary-Jane stealth sections are massively improved from Insomniac’s original *Spider-Man.*

Still, sneaking around as MJ does not even come close to the joy of swinging around New York City as Peter and Miles.
Overall, Spider-Man 2 is a worthy sequel to the first game and Miles Morales.
My only major criticisms are Miles’ role towards the end, the ease of combat, and what feels like a lack of post-game content, although that latter criticism could be fixed with DLC content.
Aside from my criticisms, the game has fun combat (even if it is too easy at times) a great story with compelling villains, and an excellent rendition of the Symbiote storyline.
I look forward to what comes next for Insomniac’s Spider-Man and their eventual Wolverine game.

The Last of Us Part Two Review: Fantastic Gameplay Ruined by an Atrocious Story.

When I reviewed my favourite video game of all time, The Last of Us, I said that, whether I loved, hated, or had mixed feelings about the sequel, I would always find myself returning to the original game because of how incredible it is.
While that is still true, whenever I do replay the game I will have to pretend that The Last of Us Part 2 never happened.
Seriously, what the hell happened with this game?
The graphics and gameplay are amazing, as expected, but the story is absolutely god awful, literally spitting in the face of Joel (Troy Baker) and Ellie’s (Ashley Johnson) relationship.
Before I get into the onslaught of terrible things about this game’s story, I’ll mention the great stuff first.
As I said, graphics and gameplay are near perfect.
There were numerous times where I was hating the story and was thankfully distracted by beautiful scenery or an amazing action sequence.
Crafting was well handled once more and I liked the more personal touch to enemies that made them feel like real people when I fought them.
The new kinds of infected are great to fight, especially the one that was teased but not revealed in the State of Play presentation.
Other amazing set pieces see you fighting through a burning village and a car chase, both of which are thrilling.

I can at least say that the gameplay of *The Last of Us Part 2* is good.

Along with this, Gustavao Santaolalla’s score is amazing, again as expected.
As for the story, there are a couple things I like about it.
Some of the new characters like Dina (Shannon Woodward), Jesse (Stephen Chang), Yara (Victoria Grace) and Lev (Ian Alexander) are likeable.
Not to the extent that the characters from the first game are but they are enjoyable for the most part.
Also, some of the scenes during Ellie’s initial revenge quest are very compelling.
Then there are the flashbacks to Ellie and Joel’s time in Jackson, which are the best parts of the game by far.
However, the rest of the story is absolutely horrible.
Written by Neil Druckmann and Haley Gross, the story sees Joel and Ellie living in the town of Jackson.
After an act of extreme violence, Ellie leave for Seattle to seek her revenge, as the writers try to create a message about the cycle of violence.
Sadly, this is a message that falls flat over on its face.
The ending to this game makes no sense whatsoever and completely derails any notion of vengeance being a bad idea, which is what the story was trying to say.

ellie should have killed abby — *The Last of Us Part 2* does a terrible job at trying to tell a story about revenge.

The build up to this ending is just as bad, with the inciting incident that causes Ellie to seek vengeance being driven by poor character decisions and feels like it was done for shock value.
A large part of why The Last of Us Part 2’s story is so bad though comes down to one, individual word.
Abby.
Played by Laura Bailey, she is the mystery woman from the trailer that introduced the Seraphites and she is, in my opinion, the worst video game character of all time.
She is completely unlikable in every sense of the word.
Naughty Dog tries to make you sympathize with her but every attempt fails spectacularly.
The story follows both her and Ellie’s struggles with revenge and the damage it causes but Abby never shows any remorse or regret for her actions, unlike Ellie.
She came across as a complete psychopath at times, making her almost impossible to care for, yet the writers try so hard to make you do so, which fails entirely.

fuck abby — I honestly cannot remember the last time I hated a character as much as I hate Abby.

Given that she is the most important character in the game next to Ellie, this is a huge problem and that problem culminates in a boss fight before the third act of the game that left me feeling insulted.
Not to mention that the game’s trailers misled and lied to us on multiple occasions.
The Last of Us Part 2’s story is just atrocious.
The game spits in the face of Ellie and Joel’s bond, the characters’ decisions make no sense, the inciting incident is not justified, Abby is an unbelievably terrible character, and the ending completely undoes any message they were trying to create.
The graphics and gameplay may have been amazing, and some story elements may have been good, but the majority of the story is so bad to the point that I never want to play this game again.