Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Dispatch Review (Ep. 1 & 2) - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

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What's up everybody? Welcome to the kind of funny games cast for Tuesday, October 21st, 2025. I'm one of your host Greg Miller alongside Forbes 30 under 30, AKA New York Game Awards nominated, AKA Poppy Ball Trades Blessing at E.O. You, you Jr. Good day, Greg. Of course, the man usually behind the buttons. It's Barrett Courtney. Hey, Barrett. So always excited to have you here because this is a special kind of funny games cast. But before then, let me remind you, of course, represented by five hours. energy. Blast through the Outer Worlds

2 in style with an exclusive skin for your Raptidon in-game pet brought to you by 5-hour energy. When you purchase a Purpleberry Punch or mock melon brew 5-hour energy products, you'll receive a unique code to unlock exclusive the Outer Worlds 2 in-game content.

Gentlemen, like I said, we'll talk about all that later, but this is a special games cast because we're reviewing dispatch. But before then, Barrett, how are you? Like I said, you never get to be on this one. How are you? Like, we've been saying that a lot, but I feel like I've been on stuff a lot lately. And I think that's just encompassing of review season in 2025

and how many goddamn games there are, you know? Because usually on average in a year, I'm on maybe two or three games cast, right? Like I reviewed persona three reload last year. Were you on metaphor? I reviewed metaphor. Did the spoiler cast for metaphor. And I think those were probably the bigger highlights for me last year

where it's like this year it's been Assassin's Creed, And I'm blanking on some other things right now that I feel like I was also part of... Recently, yeah. Yeah, Silk Song. I think I did like two of the three Silk Song things that we did recently as well. But yeah, it's been a busy year in terms of games, in terms of life. I'm already... We hit October a couple weeks ago, so I'm already starting a game of the year work for January,

and so is Andy, and it's fun to start making those assets and just start to think about What is our list going to be like? Because I have no, this is going to be the most 2021 year, I think, since 2021, where that was the year Ratchet and Clank one. And all of our lists were so different. What's the Ratched and Clank of this year is the question? Donkey Kong.

Damn. You kind of nailed it, actually. Bless, I've talked to you already, are you surviving review season? You and I've talked maybe out in the second half of this show. We get into a little bit of review season, but you're surviving? I am. I talked about it.

talked about this on like a stream or something a few days ago where I think there are times when I like I'm playing video games but I'm like not feeling it you know what I mean like yeah like video game burnout because we're always playing video games yeah I think I'm in the opposite of that where I kind of just want to play video games and so it's been it's been a great review season because I I set my eyes on four different games about like a week and a half ago okay and I was like I'm going to lock in. I'm going to review four fucking games the next two weeks, right?

Not because you like force me to or anything like that. But it's just mainly because I really wanted to play and talk about these four games. Yeah, the passion is there, the interest is there. These are all like me kind of games.

And so I didn't really want to miss out on any of them. And to my own surprise, pasted it out pretty well. Where I like, what I think the first one was Keeper and Keeper was like a shorter game that I even thought it was going to be.

And so like I knocked that out. And I was like, all right, I guess I'm moving on the Ninja Guide and then knocked that out. And then I was like, all right, I guess I'll play dispatch. Yeah. And we'll talk about it later because this is just the episodes one and two review.

But it being just episodes one and two kind of freed me up to go, all right, let me stop there. Let me move on to another game that I'm playing and like really redacted. You know, redacted. And let me paste this out responsibly. And so it's been kind of a meticulous, like, you know, planned out review season for me in a way that that feels nice. Excellent. Yeah. Well, maybe we'll talk about that later because this is the kind of funny games cast each and every weekday on a variety of

platforms. We run you through the biggest topics in gaming, whether they be reviews, previews, or just topics we need to talk about. We cover it on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, Twitch.tv.tv slash kind of funny games. And of course, on podcast services around the globe. If you like that, pick up a kind of funny membership. Of course, $10 gets all of our shows ad-free. You get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller, in a series we call Gregway. And you get good karma for supporting a small, independent, 11-person business based in San Francisco. No bucks toss our way. No big deal. Like, subscribe. share, ring the bell, tell your friends,

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the kind of funny memberships and all that stuff. Yeah. If you're listening, if you're watching, show one friend the magic of kind of funny today. There you go. We've done something funny show, you know, let's double our stuff. Pay it for. What's that one movie with that one kid? Pa it for.

Pay it's a real. Pay it for it. Yeah. You keep, it sounds like you say pave it in the streets. This is what I want you did. Speaking of pain. Was that not the kid that goes out in the street?

Paves it forward. Yeah. Next time you hit up a time and then three other streets will pave, you know, all the shit. The next drive-thru, next like McDonald's drive-thru or fast food drive-thru you go to, you know how people will be like, oh, I want to pay for the person who's behind me. I want you to write down on a piece of paper, the URL to kind of funny and tell the driver, give this to the next car.

That's good. I like that a lot. Yeah. Of course, if you want to be a part of this show as we go with your question, Questions about dispatch. Go ahead and super chat on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. I saw it earlier. It's already gone. Somebody said they'd hang out for a little bit and then leave. They want to play this and not have it ruined. We will not be doing spoilers for dispatch. Of course, we'll get into what kind of game this is. But the story is very important. And what you choose in the game is very important. So we won't be going through anything. And that'd be messed up to spoil the game before it's even out. Yeah. But when I was Googling for trailers for him, somebody's already got the first episode playthrough up. So that's happening. So that is something that's out there and going on. Of course, we're an 11-person business all about live talk shows. That makes an email this morning.

I was going to say it. It would make a lot more sense. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we did. I didn't even think about it, right? Yeah. Of course, kind of funny games daily already happened. It was about the price increase in Xbox dev kits.

And after this, we're playing RV there yet. If you're a kind of funny member, today's Greg Way is titled Slow Newsday IGN and clocks in at about 18 minutes. Damn, I can't believe you're going after Rebecca Valentine. You know what I mean? Be fast on the ball. That's messed up. Thank you to our Patreon Producers Carl Jacob Omega Buster and Delaney

the Somme twining. We'll tell you about them and our sponsors and all that jazz later. But for now, it's time for topic of the show. Dispatch Review, everybody. I can't believe we're here, Barrett. You mentioned this in Games Daily a little bit.

But Dispatch announced awesome trailer at the Game Awards. We were like amazing. Yeah, you know, Aaron Paul's in it. Laura Bailey's in an insane. They have great chemistry on stage together. a little too good a little too good. A little too good. Ad hoc studios,

the people who had split it off from tell to, amazing, amazing. And then this year kept going. And it seemed like, okay, this game's not going to happen. Maybe we get one episode of this game this season, this year,

but it's not going to happen. And then lo and behold, they come out and they say October 22nd, we're putting out episodes one and two. And the week after that, episodes three and four, the week after that, all the way to episodes seven and eight are out

in just three weeks from today or tomorrow, I guess, technically. Are you shocked that we made it, Barrett? Yeah. You know, we never got to do this on content, but I did get to be a part of a hands-off preview event thing, like a month ago.

Yeah. We got a little bit of time to ask the devs questions. And like hearing them talk about, like, how passionate they were about wanting to still stay true to like this episodic formula that this team knew so well from working at telltale, but wanting, like having the drive to actually make that work in a sense of like actually being consistent about releasing episodes and not do the tell tell thing. All right, here's one episode and now we're going to go quiet for five months and you're not really going to hear from us. So it was really excited.

You know, we got so late into the year. And it's like, yeah, this probably isn't going to come out. And I feel like I don't even know if I like realize this was episodic until like a month or so ago, but them like sticking to their guns and being like, hey, we've got eight episodes and two episodes are out every week for a month. And I was like, all right, like they've, they've got something to prove here. And they're showing up so far. So I think it's very exciting that we're finally here.

Perhaps you don't know anything about dispatch. Let me give you some stats and figures. Of course, the developer is Ad Hoc Studio. If you say I heard about that, but I don't understand why. From their Wikipedia, Ad Hoc Studio is an American video game developer founded in 2018 by industry veterans from Telltale Games, Ubisoft, in Night School Studio, namely Telltale alum Michael Chung. Nick Herman, Dennis Lenart, and Pierre Chorette.

The studio's first game Dispatch is set to be released episodically starting October 22nd and ending on November 12th. Publisher, of course, is Ad Hoc Studio and Critical Role has come in to help support this one. Steam description reads like this. Dispatch is a superhero workplace comedy where choices matter. Manage a dysfunctional team of misfit heroes and strategize who to send to emergencies around the city all while balancing office politics, personal relationships, and your own quest to become a hero. Right now in Metacritic, there is no score. Of course, this is episodic, so many people are handling it different ways as they go.

But some blurbs I have for you that I've pulled, Fraser Brown over at PC Gamer Rights, dispatch cuts out the filler, fully embracing its TV roots. It makes complete sense that this was originally pitched as a show, but what's impressive is that it's maintained that pace and energy in this new form. Some player agency is lost as a result, but not so much that I feel like my hands have. have been slapped away from the steering wheel.

Two characters, oh, that, I'm sorry, it did the thing where I copied in, the fucking caption of the photo that I, I do. So back to it.

And it's with great sense of relief that I can say it's a great superhero yarn and genuinely funny without caveats like, quote unquote, for a video game. And that's still pretty rare. Certainly when it comes to comedy. I get startled when a game makes me properly laugh.

It's so unexpected. But dispatch got some real guffaws out of me. That's enough to keep me to stick around for all eight episodes. Meanwhile, over at the gaming Bible, Kate Harold gave it a 10 out of 10 these first two episodes. Wow. Wow. There's still a long way to go with six episodes of Dispatch yet to drop, but I find myself

almost entirely without trepidation as we look ahead. Dispatch's opening two episodes have assured me of what an exceptional experience this game is going to turn out to be. Ad Hoc Studios has nailed it across the board. Dispatch boasts engaging storylines, amusing humor, perfect cast performances, and beautiful animation, all backed up by a unique and compelling gameplay system. that allows the experience to swing. This is shaping up to be one of the best games I've ever played, says Kate over there.

Wow. Strong words. That's glowing. Yeah, yeah. It's a 10 out of 10. That's what you'd expect out of it, right? Of course, we have played these first two episodes. We did have access to all four, though, Barrett.

And you made a reference to this earlier. You boys stopped at one and two. I stopped at one and two. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I went on, of course, and that's where we come and do an interesting caveat for you. I talked about this in Gregway, last week. But for your own edification, as you hear us talk about these, it's worth noting that

I went down and did a sponsored gig with them where I hosted a conversation with the voice cast. So I have taken money from Ad Hoc Studios recently, and I want you to know that. As I'm still going to give you my opinion of the game, which I gave to them in person straight up when we were there. And to be clear, even though you went ahead, this review is only the first. And I'm not. And again, I would never ruin the twists and turns, not only of the story, but of these episodes or anything. I want you to get in their experience it.

So, Barrett Courtney, you're on the desk, you're here hanging out. What do you think of episodes one and two? Dispatch the first two episodes I had a really good time with. I think this being a game that I've been looking forward to for almost a year at this point, but not being so like, you know, rewatching trailers all the time, like not being like obsessed with it. I was, and, you know, being able to preview it like a month ago, I think I was expecting a little bit more from these first two episodes to hook me in because it felt like these first two episodes don't do anything more for me at least than like the trailers did it's kind of like you know setting you into the

premise getting you a good idea a better idea of like who these characters are what the relationships are and getting you into that gameplay that i know a lot of people were taken by from the was it like another steam steamed next fest demo or something like that earlier in the and so a lot of it was like all right yeah this is the game and i'm i'm excited to get another hook in me past that. And I think where this week's pair of episodes leaves off, it doesn't quite get like an extra hook in me. Like I'm already sold.

I'm already on board. But these first two episodes didn't like bring in a new factor where I'm like, oh man, like now like now I'm completely sold on this. I'm like this is the only thing I'm going to be thinking about for the next month or so. I think the humor is solid. You know, it does a lot of, you know, potty humor, a lot of swearing. which, you know, if you all know me, is kind of my forte as well. But nothing that like really stood out to me is like unique or new.

I think the world is something that I'm wanting definitely more from. I think even the way that they're depicting some of the powers is really fun and interesting. The main character who is Robert Robertson, right? His whole premise, like I love the premise of like, you know, he's essentially almost like Ironman grandson who has inherited the suit, but it does not have the smarts of a Tony Stark. So it's just like, he's this kind of a guy and kind of a dude and is thrown into this situation where his suit no longer works. And he's now working at this dispatch location.

And I think like the premise is there and it's solid. And I think the thing that really stood out to me was more of like the, not the humor or even like the kind of like main. relationships up that they're setting up, but more of like the more intimate, subtle relationship stuff that they're building. Like Jeffrey Wright's character, I think. So good.

Aaron Paul and Jeffrey Wright works so well together with those characters that, like those smaller moments of familiarity and comfort that you feel between some of these characters really stood out to me. More so than like the office comedy humor stuff that it has going on, if that makes sense.

I would say like my big, my biggest thing with the first two episodes, I would say, is pacing. I felt like was a little weird, which is why I think this is like the first two episodes to me are like a 7.5 good. I think it's a good starting foundation. I will check in every week. But I think for me, I thought the kind of pacing out of kind of the big tantalizing thing of this game that makes it unique from a tell tell game or another episodic game like a Life a strange or something is the kind of strategy dispatching stuff that you're doing, which I don't feel like I got enough of personally in these first two episodes. Yeah, that's really episode two thing.

Yeah, you do like kind of a tutorial version of it at the very end of the first episode. And then you get your first like actual chance with it in the second episode. And I think even just like the way that they paste that out is kind of weird and even just thinking about it in terms of comedy. Like I think it would have been better if those two things were closer together because your, uh, your tutorial version is like how a normal day at dispatch, uh, dispatching work goes, working with normal heroes. And then you work with these all like all shitty ex-villains who are cracking jokes and are, you know, taking bets on when you're going to quit and all that stuff. Like there's just something about some of that that I think could have been,

uh, paced a little bit better. Um, but you know, I'm still excited for it. And I'm excited to see where it all eventually goes. Plus top level. Where are you with one and two? I think this game makes such a good first impression. I have a lot of thoughts as far as like what it's doing as a video game and how much I could just watch this as an Amazon show. I say Amazon just because like invincible. It looks like invincible.

It looks like invincible. It reminds me of something like the boys. It feels, I mean, it's so much in the ilk of a lot of the superhero parodies that we get nowadays, right? Like things that are kind of, you know, flowing off of, oh, you've seen this. Oh, you've seen Suicide Squad. Oh, you've seen the Iron Man, right?

And it's making fun and like kind of doing its own twists on a lot of these things, which we've seen a lot. But what I will say is that even though this is well-worn territory, I think this game keeps it very fresh. And I am not tired. Like, I don't feel a sense of being tired of this thing while playing this game, right? I think it has really great writing. I think the characters are really engaging. And I think the dialogue is just, is fantastic. I think the game is really pretty, which is where the first impression thing is,

comes from for me where as it starts, I'm like, wow, if this wasn't a video game, if there was zero interaction to this, I would be fine just watching this as a TV show. But then you get into the video game of it and I like the choices you're making. Obviously, with it having this lineage of formerly telltale people working on this, you get the pop-ups that are like this person. We'll remember this and all of stuff. And I want to see how that stuff plays out because I think they set up some really interesting things with that. But even beyond that, you talk about the dispatch part of it.

it. And I actually didn't mind how it plays into this. You know, it's so interesting looking at this in contrast to a Telltale, or Life is strange, but I'll stick on Tail Tail, because that's where the lineage is. And when you think of the interactivity with Tailtale, it is walking around these like limited spaces and like picking up items and maybe those items come into play later on, like more traditional sort of choose your own adventure game stuff. For this game to go, ah, no, you're not doing any walking around. Like there's no walking around in this game. Your gameplay is making choices in the dialogue and doing this dispatch thing. And at the beginning they even say, like,

do you want the cinematic experience? Like, you can take all the choice. You can take all the motions out of it of like doing, you know, QTEs or whatever. We can just play that for you and you can just make choices. That's a good call out. Yeah, so there's QTE as well, which the game is like, do you want to do them or not? I think it's kind of ballsy. And that's, I think, where there's more of a conversation there as far as,

does that work? Does that not work? Like, how does that compare to if you're able to actually control these characters? I really like it, though. there's something to it that I think it's deep enough to really actually put you in the role of this dispatcher and making choices and actually having a gameplay flow that is fun in the moment but doesn't overstay its welcome and there's a lot of flavor there as far as how they use that to develop these this cast of characters that are essentially a suicide squad like cast of villains that are trying to be superheroes or whatever yeah um I think they do a great job with all these things I come out of this if I'm going to give it a score with a nine out of ten oh wow okay I think the first two episodes are amazing. I think they're fantastic, and I really can't wait to play more. I love Telltale.

I love Telltale games back in the day. I think so many people know me from Walking Dead or Batman Post shows or anything where I've just, me and Mitch talking about episodes, seasons one, or up at noon or yada, yada, yada, so like them being a Bay Area company, I knew Telltale so well in terms of both the experience. You didn't know that? I did. No idea. They used to be up in San Rafael. Okay.

Rest in peace. But then they rose. No, San Rafael still. I got bad news, guys. I just got news. No, all that I feel in love. So like coming in here, especially for them to tackle superheroes, especially for them to tackle superheroes in a grown-up way, a mature way,

and maybe immature way, but it's what I always say, right? What do I want from an invincible game? What did I always want from a Superman game? Give me a tell-tale game. We know these guys are all powerful. So give me choices. Am I going to save Lois or I'm going to save the Kents and make that matter? and they gave us to a degree with Batman

and made interesting choices with the lore back of them. I was stoked for this. I was excited for this, but I was prepared for in their telltale game. Jumping into it, my first impressions were, holy shit,

does this look good? I can't believe how well this is running. Telltale games always rain like trash. And I know that's not to put this all on the shoulders of ad hoc. There's a whole bunch of stuff to mismanagement of the studio and yet, yeah,

that they had nothing to do with. So to get in here and have it actually be that like the music is fucking awesome. And it feels like I'm watching a Amazon TV show. The visuals look like this. The performances are so good. We've been talking a lot about Jeffrey Wright,

Aaron Paul. Laura Bailey's in this, of course, who we know from everything, right? Matthew Mercer, Alana Pierce. Shout out to Alana, who does great in this game as well, right? Thought Squad, who I now know, who's amazing. Aaron, you bet, who's been in like every television game forever. It's just, they have such a great thing going here for the presentation and what they're doing and the story.

like episode one being sub an hour even I would say both of them are probably 45 each I replayed them last minute yeah yeah yeah and so like you're to the one I read earlier the review from Frazier who's like they cut all the fat and this is like you know it's you're no filler 100% true like I was in the entire time

the only time I felt myself falling out of it was the dispatching like the gameplay you do in this again Kevin if you can throw it up I sent you gameplay pulled from the demo. This is off a full play by Gamer's Little Playground when Kevin gets it up through Slack. You go in, you pick who you're putting on the mission, you have to look at what their strengths

are on this Pentagon here that has like, you know, fighting their brain power, their defense, whatever, their speed. And then you, they have a, you know, if they're going to succeed, fail. When you come back with a mission, you get XP that you can then put into their points to make the characters better. It's, it

didn't take me out. But it was the part where I was like, oh man, full breaks on the story we were doing to go in here, which isn't 100% true because they do a great job of having all the superheroes you see down there that we're covering, but like Golem, Prism, Coupe talk to each other.

And it's entertaining and it's pushing the plot and it's, it'll pull from what we just did and what choice I just made and into this whole thing. The whole thing, it's frictionless because you could fail every mission and keep going. There's not going to be a game over. There's not going to be a thing. But it was for me like, oh man,

I envisagal said something. There was a great plot point right before this. that I'm more interested in getting back to. None of it overstays it's welcome. It wasn't long enough for me to feel like, oh, man, I don't like this, whatever, da-da-da-da-da. And again, this is early. It was the tutorial.

It was just episode two where you're really doing it. Hopefully it warms up as I make the team and I put more stuff in there. I'll be more stoked with it. But everything around it, I think for me, was that to your, I'm amazed. This is amazing. Yeah.

And then this came in and I'm like, well, now we're talking about how do you review a video game versus how do you review a thing I'm mainly watching even though I'm doing, you know, QTEs in it. and stuff in this hacking game. Right now for episodes one and two,

I was going to say I'm 7.5.8. Like I think the experience of what you're doing here and going through it is probably great. I'm not sold on the gameplay portion necessarily. And not sold saying it's good. This still is, you know, for some reason, PC gaming, am I right? I booted in here and it looks like maybe my save got copied over wrong or whatever and I don't have my save.

So I'm going to need to replay episodes 1, 2, 3, and 4, it turns out. And I'm excited about that. That's not like, oh, what a bummer. It's like, oh, I'll get a place. I'm going to play on PlayStation, get on, have Jen be there and go through, you know what I mean, get some trophies, but it's like, I'm not bummed out by that. And I think coming back, I had a lot of what you talked blessing about with your demo. When you did the demo, you talked about finishing it and being like, oh, I didn't realize

it was this kind of game. And you went and ran it back. Yeah. I think me jumping in and now understanding a bit more, like, because when you're looking at all the, you know, the ideas here of what, a. character strong with, right? What the duo is strong with when you put more people in there. That is that decides if you win or lose.

And I wasn't good at that in my first time out. Yeah, to explain it for people who might not be aware. And also for audio listeners, I'm doing a good job. And for audio listeners, yeah, like when you're in the dispatch mode, it essentially turns into a management simulation where you have eight different heroes that you're commanding and telling, oh, hey, there's a cat stuck in the street here. Can you go and do this and save them, right? Oh, hey, there's this vandalism happening over there.

and based on what type of help people need or what type of thing is happening, you then have this cast of supervillains or formerly super villains, now superhero. Yeah, the idea is you're running basically, as we said it, we say it, but yeah, suicide's what. These are villains who are looking to be reformed so they're here trying to work off.

And they each have their own stats to them. And so it's things like intellect, charisma, mobility, I think strength might be one, right? And like defense, yeah. And so based off of those stats, you have to read, okay who's somebody who's best equipped to save a cat out of the tree basically who's the person that's going to be able to show up to this

you know brand you know big opening of a new area of the city and we need somebody to like speak on behalf or whatever you know like you have to make those decisions who are to people that you can know might be able to work well together to sneak into a thing exactly and so as you go you can also level up characters and like maybe increase stats and things like that and yeah you have like these different scenarios that put they put you in the role of a 911 dispatcher, essentially. Yeah, except you have superheroes that you're throwing out here. And so, yeah, it's an interesting thing.

There's, it's not super deep, but it is. Like, I feel like there's that thing of, like, I didn't understand, oh, I really should be assigning two people to max it out. I was like, well, I want people on my bench. So if another call comes in, I don't fail the call. But again, it's very lenient in terms of, like, leveling up and moving things around. And like, I want to experiment more. Yeah, and talking with the, or listening to the Debs talk like a month ago, it was funny hearing them talk about

like the reaction from the the Steam demo and they were saying like people take that stuff way more seriously than like we do in terms of like how good you need to be at it and like how deep it is and all this stuff like for them it sounds like just another

fun aspect to like actually have a gameplay element that makes sense for the story that they're telling and then also you know build story around that as well so like I'm really again it's tough to really talk about these

these first two episodes alone, right? Because a lot of it feels like setup. I'm interested from a gameplay standpoint if there's more like story payoff from this part of the game than just upgrading your characters. Like, you know, they also have stats that like they have like a leveling system

where, you know, let's say malella levels up. You can make her, give her one charisma point or one strength point or whatever. I wonder if that comes into play of like, oh, if you get certain characters to certain levels by a certain story beat, does that unlock a different choice or something like that? Like I'm interested to see if we get payoffs in terms of story and not just gameplay and how that all integrates together. That stuff I'm really excited and interested for.

I guess that's part of it for me in that you'll see as these episodes go on, right, as we get deeper and deeper into the season. Is the idea of, bear it to your point of, are the actions on, doing inside of here going and effect it outside because like right now in a perfect world what I would love to do is that this was a spoiler gas and I say hey there was this big choice did you do this or that like and what about this little choice like they should do a full season yeah at the end those are the permutations I'm the most interested in and not well did you win the battle and did the thing and so are we are we building to a thing where it's like oh shit I really should have because now there was this big deal like yeah and you would assume so but who know

yeah and that's my thing is I think I'm coming out of these dispatch sections not necessarily thinking about how I affected the game or whatever and more so understanding the characters better. I think this is just an avenue for you to learn who Coupe is or learn who Sonar is and understand Invisigal. You have these eight characters that I'm sure

are going to be more consequential of the story as you move forward. Especially as you make choices about them. Yes. And so like this kind of being your way to interact with all of them at the same time and having them interact with each other while you're doing this thing in between

of dispatching them out, I think works really well. well in integration to the story. And just more of like thinking about how they could play with each other. Like if you make a certain decision in just like the story part of it, does that, will that eventually like affect, you know, gameplay stuff here, right? Like if you decide to be, you know, an asshole to flambay at some point, like does at one point he say, like, you tell him to dispatch and he just goes like the other way or something?

Right. I'm interested to see like how that could ebb and flow and all that stuff. and I'm interested to see like if how deeply they actually thought about you know with this being another avenue for storytelling through gameplay how that all kind of messes with each other and again it being the first two episodes

it's kind of hard to see the full vision which is why I'm like I think I'm a bit cooler than you know seemingly a lot of other people on it but I'm excited to see what the payoff is yeah I think that's the biggest thing is I'm excited for more I again even being like yeah the management I could take or leave like I'm still like I want to go see where the story's going. I think they've done

really a great job of making a compelling cast. Like when you go through and actually start getting into the weeds of these people and making the choices with them like, okay, I'm starting a vibe. Something that's not necessarily factoring into my review of episodes one and two because it's slightly unrelated, but it is very related to the game as a whole. I don't like the episodic thing. Oh, I want to talk about this. Yeah. I don't know.

I guess I see what you potentially benefit as far as having the week-to-week conversation. I just don't think that's how games work nowadays. Well, it's an interesting thing that I'd love to talk about right after I remind you about how Kind of Funny works. Of course, we couldn't do this without your support.

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as we said at the top of the show, maybe you weren't paying attention though. This is episodic. Episodes 1 and 2 dropping tomorrow Wednesday, October 22nd, and then two episodes all the way down to we're done with 7 and 8. The question is is episodic still the right move?

My other question, and we can tackle them in the order is, is dispatch going to sell? $30 is the question here. Obviously we're working with 1 and 2, 7.5 from Barrett and 9 from Bless 7.5 slash 8 from Greg on these ones. I think lots to unpack, but they're the same similar

conversation maybe? In terms of selling, I think it was an interesting choice and not to give me some grace to understand where I'm coming from here. Not to be like, oh, I want the full game now type of thing.

But I think if you're looking for this new IP to like really hit and to like have people know, like my best friend Ricky who's like into video games but you know, not super paying attention to them all the time, loves Telltales Wolf Among Us, loves this episodic stuff. For him to know about this type of stuff,

I think you need that like almost full season review today. Yeah. Maybe not the final episode, but like a full thing of like, so you have outlets like IGN who aren't giving it reviews today. Did they even review it? I don't think they reviewed the first two episodes. So I wonder if outlets like that are waiting for the final episodes to come out in a month.

Yeah. And I just think, I think in terms of like a selling, marketing beat. Like I get wanting to do the conversation week to week with the audience. But I think to sell and to have an audience, you got to tell them like,

hey, the reviewers played this entire thing and they say it's worth it. And they're like, you should be excited for the week to week conversation because it's going to keep you. It's going to keep pulling you. And I think this was a weird maybe possible misstep into like selling people on

jumping in for the first week. Yeah. I 100% agree with that. I also wonder, Is there, can you buy this just the first episode or just the first two episodes? No, you got to buy it. I think there's a demo. The chat has been saying that. The steam demo is still. According to chat, it's just episode one, I believe.

Oh, okay. Is that what it? Because I remember, because I think that's another reason why I'm kind of with you, Baird, as far as it's kind of a weird, I guess, like, marketing slash just a progression of how you've done this embargo. Because I, back when I played the demo for this game, it was. basically most of episode two is what the demo I played was. And so, like, for me, it's weird.

If I'm IGN, I wouldn't review it either until I have the full thing, right? I mean, you know, we've talked about this in our content meetings every week, but I mean, behind the curtain here, it is that idea of like, I would love to review dispatch every week. I would love it. We're not going to do that. I'm worried about what the views of this episode will be, let alone, like, if we were going to do it. If we were just do episodes three and four.

It would be just through the routine. Yeah, you start the, I didn't play episodes one or two, so I'm not going to read three and four or watch three and four and like you get into that mix of it and so i think that then brings us to your question of like was episodic a thing anymore and like there's this argument sure that could work in their favor of it's episodic and if you have two bangers every week there is a conversation on shows message boards discords or whatever that keeps it in the conversation yep but there's also really easily anytime this happens that you fall behind you buy this you you want you play episodes one or two three and four you're busy four and four and

five come out and everybody loves it, but I didn't want to do three and four. I mean, it's like, you get into that mix of we're no longer competing just for video game attention. You're competing for everything, whether it be to entertainment, over, yeah, music. I think that, I think that works if this is dropping on Amazon Prime. You know what I mean? I think that works if this is dropping as a Netflix video game. But when we're talking about buying the game for $30, you have to then to bear's point sell people at the beginning that they're going to play this week to week and like keep up and do all that stuff. And I don't think, I mean, most of people are going to play this are probably going to play this

after all the episodes are out. I'd imagine because they're going to want to see those reviews. Yeah. Chat has been saying that they want to wait for it. And so I think what you're doing then is disjointing the conversation, right? Like I think you're making it so that there's not this big wave of oh damn, I played through dispatch. Y'all got to check out this game. It's like people aren't going to be saying that until maybe the end.

And then at that point, have you just lost the loss? And I worry about it too on that point of like, and I, even the conversation we're having, I feel like, is a conversation out of time because like at IGN sure we would do and do hey we're going to have the discussions between Mitch and Greg about the episode but like I don't IGN and the GameSpot don't have any coverage up right now of this review embargo and that's not knocking them it's a busy time and they're a huge website and they need to serve the most people so it's this question of then is they're going I don't feel like

there's a place to go to have the conversations if you wanted to have them yeah I want to have I love what I've seen I love ad hoc from what they've done before I'm going to be a part of this conversation. I feel like you need a this is where you go. When the episode happens, then you watch this show, you go to this Discord, you go to this, and I'm sure they have an ad hoc Discord, I'm not a Discord person. I want to talk to y'all about it, but if I come in and

Barrett had a new Hot Mulligan's album, he didn't play this the night before, it's like, well, okay, when are we going to do it? And I also think you run the risk of and this is just, basically this is like how fucked it is to try to market a video game. You run the risk of, it is a banger, and these sites are covering it every week

for the next month. At what point does the person who was waiting to see if they should buy it just get sick of seeing Discord or dispatch thumbnails and headlines and stories they don't want to watch it because they're waiting for the full thing and then they just, I don't know. That's why I think like it would have been smarter to do

again what Netflix and like HBO will sometimes do and TV shows is like here's the entire season except the finale you know? Just so you can have like a general sense of like oh, this entire season has a sauce.

Maybe it drops off by the, maybe the final, the finale fucks it all up. But like, you have a full understanding of what the season is. So you can tell the audience, like, hey, this is something worth to check in on every week. Yeah. And so I just, I do think that this very important first

beat, a day before release, I think was a big misstep. I have an article here from IGN, Ryan McCaffrey, September 16th, where he has a quote from people from dispatch talking about the episode. thing where they say, quote, we think the release format is an underrated part of the player experience. Ad hoc,

co-founder and dispatch creative director, Nick Herman said, episodic is a format that makes the story easy to slip into, easy to keep up with, and easy to share with friends. We went to launch of dispatch to be appointment gaming, but with the weekly cadence of a TV show, as opposed to asking people to wait months between each release. And I understand it. I just don't think that's how video games work.

I think that's my thing with it. I think for, honestly, I think, if you were going to do this, I would have really targeted the streaming community of, hey, play this live with your audience. Well, let's talk about the cast then. Sure. Because you do have

Alana Pierce. You do have Moist Critical. You do have... Jack Septica. Yeah, exactly. So I do think there is going to be a bit of, hey, we do have these big streamers who will probably play their game. And hopefully that helps in terms of, you know, also being a B.

And yeah, you have Thought Squad in there. of young gravy as one of the voices, you know? And so, like, they do have a cast, and I think that cast is also a big marketing thing. And I, and I, and I, this is such a weird pushing pull of what it is and what it is to make an indie

game in this day and age. It's like, who are you trying to serve, right? You can't try to mark, go to everybody. That's just not how it works. So I open their Discord here,

right? They have just show, just shy, excuse me, have 10,000 members, right? So it's like, if you're trying to serve that audience that is going to come here and is going to nerd out and is going to talk and stream on their channels,

like, I don't know. This is clearly something every video game struggles with. How do you capture market share and attention and keep it going? And I do think the, like I'm more coming at the criticism of the episodic thing, just more of like the marketing standpoint. I think in terms of like the audience thing,

I do get the passion. I do get their belief and understand their belief in this formula and having an audience in a community that comes together every week to talk about it. Maybe it's, you know, they're not going to the, IGNs and game spots to check in on reviews but that's because they're just going to have conversations with their fellow friends

that they've made in this community right? Which I think is like I think is admirable for them to try for like their first game out from Tell Tell to see if like if we can do episodic and actually have it be consistent for the first time

in forever because we're not working on an engine that is killing us and you know we have a specific vision and we're using it in an engine that we can use to actually build something that works around a story that we want to tell and we tell it within a month and it's done. Like I do want to give them like the leeway

to see if that works for them. See, I think my thing is, because even when I ask about episodic, I ask it, I think even less so from the point of marketing and more so for the point of does it serve the actual game? And I think my, I think part of my beef with it comes back to the original point you're talking about Baird and your first thoughts in the review,

being that the pacing can be kind of weird in this game. Where we're talking about 45 minutes, minute episodes. And a chunk of that is eaten up by the dispatch part of dispatch, right? Like, you know, the actual gameplay part of the game, which I'm okay with. I think that's fun. But I think what that leaves you with is 20-something minutes of story,

something around there. And so when you're talking about giving me two episodes a week, for me, I'm like, I don't, I wouldn't really want to wait that long. I'm saying this is somebody who I have the first four episodes, but I stopped myself because I wanted to just have the first two for this review because I didn't want to go ahead, or get ahead myself.

But yeah, like, for me, I'm kind of like, is this something I would wait every week for? Is this something I would want to have that break in between? Not really. I want to just, I wanted to sell me on it. And that was my big disappointment for these first two episodes. It's like, again, you know, these first two episodes just feel like the trailer of like they're selling you on the the character,

the premise, all of this stuff. Yes. And I was waiting for that like, that good hook to have me. Like if we were the audience and we weren't reviewing this and, you know, we didn't have early review copy. I wanted that final hook to be like,

oh, fuck, I can't wait till next week. And like, I want to think about like all of the possibilities where I think like the how episode two ends and I again, I won't say anything. It's like,

I don't think it's interesting enough. I agree. And it's like, oh, Like I needed this to hit more Just because and I think that's Again to not say anything specific It's more of like

Not where they come at it from a superhero story But more so from like an office comedy thing That I just don't think it's like a very interesting Or new like avenue to go down Where I'm like okay I was I was hoping for something Here's a little bit of a counter to it And it's jumping off of Blessing's last point there When these do

come around every Wednesday for the next three weeks, right? Especially if I'm going to replay them all now. I will be excited, I think, if I don't fall behind. Because it is that idea of as short as my gaming time is, oh man, this thing that I can accomplish in 45 minutes. Yes. So I can do

with Jen before she goes to bed. And that will work for me. And I know that everybody's different, but like in terms of the amount of times I sit down and it is like, I'm on a review and I know I have double digit hours in front of me, ugh. Whereas like this one being like, well, let's do this, knock that out in between things.

Similar to how I was excited for skate, of like, jump in and do three challenges before I do the next thing. Or when I'm done with the next review, jump in, you know what I mean? Have that little pallet cleanser. Skated ween today. Can't wait. But, like, yeah, like that, I think there is an angle to that. And it, but I think it'll almost be like, oh, I forgot about it.

I'm not on the edge of my seat. Like, I got to know what happens next. Oh, my God. There are interesting threads. But again, like, I think that last beat needed to really like, oh, man, I need to play episode three right now type of feeling, which I didn't get. And for me, that is,

that is, I think something that makes episodic worthwhile nowadays. You know what I mean? Like, we're in the streaming era. Everything is, hey, we're dropping the whole season at once. Well,

they stop doing that now because I wasn't eating them a lot. Yeah, sometimes they're shaking it up. You know, and or does three, like, what was it, three, four episodes?

Oh, yeah, every week. He's doing the same thing. Did you know? Diego Luna is named Andor? Wait, what are you saying?

What are you saying to be right now? Andor is, Indore isn't a planet. It's the guy from Rogue 1. Yeah. Ben got a Lego and I saw the name there. I was like, ah. You didn't know that?

You thought, okay, we know it? I guess. I've never watched Andor. I watched Rogue 1. I won't hold that again. Because I think I probably thought the same thing before I started watching Andor, and then they called him casting Indoor. I was like, oh, yeah, it's still upsets me that you call Asoka Queen Amadala.

That's just a joke, though, to make people. I know. This is a real thing that happens. To get back to the point I was about to make, though. Yeah, like, I think the, where, in a place where yeah, like they're going back and forth. Stranger Things is doing the same thing. But even strange, the last season of Stranger Things, which did a similar thing of,

I think they did like half season. Half a season, right? But that half season ended with a cliffhanger. Like not that, it was a good one. And not that everything needs a cliffhanger necessarily, but you need, you need some hook. You need to make me go, damn, I can't wait for the next thing. Right. And I still can't wait for it because I'm giving us a nine out of ten, right?

I really, really enjoyed these first two episodes. There was a game that did episodic, but it wasn't episodic. It was all off. Life is Strange 3. I was strange true colors. Yeah, I did that. Yeah, maybe. I remember they had great cliffhangers where I was doing the,

True colors for sure. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this thing and stop. And then I was like, oh, fuck, I got to see how this starts. And then you'd be into the next one. Like this is for me is right now, this is a game that I would have liked to binge. And I think your point about, you know,

if you're not like, if you're not buried in things or like, you're going to be ready to play this if you're not. I think that's doing a lot of heavy lifting, right? Like, I think whenever it is for video games, oh yeah, when the next thing drops, I'll be there for it. I think that fails most of the time. I'm not, it is doing heavy lifting. I don't know.

I don't think that's where we are anymore. I think it's way harder to capture attention and keep attention, so I do worry about this. I think you can look no further than DLC. We talk about this all the time, right? If people who buy games get the season pass, get the deluxe edition, and they never open the DLC. They never download the DLC, and they loved that game.

It's just that they never actually finished it. They put so much there. Or they've just, they're so far gone. They turned on the DLC. And it's like, how do I play this anymore? I don't remember. Those aren't the issues here, which I think works to its advantage of it could be. You miss three weeks or you fucking do episodes one or two and then a year from now.

Like, all right, you could jump back in because this is just swiping the stick and like, you know, very easy Q to E. That's the thing is, I think the thing that it has going for it is for the episodic thing is that it is such a frictionless game, right? It is like, this can damn near, damn near just being a TV series. like the interaction is limited until you get to the dispatch stuff but I think that does kind of work for being something that's easy to turn on and go all right you know two episodes two new episodes are out let's put on some dispatch and play it real quick and kind of be done with the internet one thing I want to circle back to

is the cast just because someone was like oh the content creators being this is selling me less on the game I would say don't count them out because I think they're actually pretty well cast because I know they're fantastic people can have a certain feeling about like, well, you know, we could have got an actual, like, voice actors in here and all this stuff. But I think they're, like, well utilized. And I don't think they over say they're welcome.

Like, Charlie Moist Critical voices the bat sonar dude. And he has like maybe like six or seven lines, right? It's a lot of the throwaway stuff you're getting inside of these things. Aaron Paul, Aaron Yvette, and Laura Bailey and Jeffrey

right. Jeffree. Right. That's the cat. And like, and you can tell, like, Laura Bailey is one of your suicide squad people. It's like, oh, that's the one voice actor. She's going to be important. And everybody else is just maybe set tracing. But again, after only two episodes, maybe, you know, maybe I'm underselling of like how big they're going to be.

But yeah, you also have young gravy in there who like, for my understanding is like kind of a social media musician, dude. I don't know. But it's like, that man's not a voice actor. But like. But here's my thing is I've played plenty of games and I've been in games where I shouldn't be in that game. but they put me, and I don't, everybody I've heard here, nobody, I've been like, oof, yeah, you're not a real voice.

No, yeah, like, everybody fits their role, like, well. But again, I'm interested to see, like, do they continue to have this level of just kind of like, oh, they're just talking a little bit during the dispatch sections or, uh, uh, you know, do they get more character stuff? Do they get more, do they become more important in the story? Uh, I do want to shout out there is one scene, uh, with, uh, either Samoan or Hawaiian character, uh, in the game that Alyssa had fallen asleep right before I got to the scene and I had to go. Yeah, and so I went back to that scene to have her watch it.

It's the voice by the Rock's stunt double. Oh. And he's from Honolulu. And they just like, it really felt like they just didn't even write the scene. They're just like, just talk, just go, like, it is full on, like, pigeon and it is hilarious. and they do such a good job of like letting him do his thing. And that was like a standout scene for me.

So I just wanted to shout out his performance because right now his character seems like a bit of a smaller character. But then I'll be interested to see like how important he becomes and how like off script or whatever they'll let him go. Because there are some there's some deep polls where I'm like, oh, that stuff I've only heard while Alyssa's also talking to people. I know we don't deep into that episode of conversation. but like I can't stress enough how much my love and adoration of this experience so far for the first two episodes is so carried by just the story

and the performances of the characters like every scene I'm in like this I'm liking this as much as I like an invincible which is not what I, for me that's such a high bar for what I get out of the Invincible show and I know what everybody gets out of the Invincible show but this is doing such a good job

at being one of those and I can't commend them enough for like how good the writing is in this game. A thousand percent I'm right there with you on all of that yeah, it's just that gameplay where I'm like I'm not sure if I'm going to be all about this for the rest of the episodes. Fair enough.

But you'll find out. Last thing, we played on Steam Deck. How to work for you, Bliss? Someone was wondering. It worked well for me on Steam Deck. It worked perfectly for me on Steam Deck. Okay. I was getting some screen flashing every once in a while,

like just like frames of black every once in a while. And then, like, even having, like, the Steam Deck plugged into the, like, dock for the TV. Like besides that, it like works pretty well. I did thought, I did think I was getting a visual bug for some of the like chance roll things. Okay. In the dispatch stuff. But then looking at the gameplay from the demo, it looks like that was actually on purpose.

And like it just looks, the way they present some of the things that you help with, they only show like a piece of the stat, like a skill bar or whatever. And that some of that presentation was a little bit weird. But yeah, besides the every once in a while frames of. black, ran really well on steam. Nice. Hell yeah. Okay. So to run it back out for the first two episodes, Barrett's got a 7-5. Bless, he's got a 9. I'm somewhere between a 7-5 and 8. Probably more to 8, like I said.

I think amazing everything and then the gameplay is when I was like, I don't know. We'll see how it's out. Over the next few weeks, I'm sure even if we don't do reviews, you'll hear us chatter on it about games dailies. And yeah, I'd love to, at the end of this comeback. Do like a spoiler cast full season review type of thing. Oh, yeah. Everybody. This has been another episode. to the Kind of Funny Games cast.

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