dispatch - 4/10
at least the average visual novel makes you click to continue reading
i have truly never understood this genre of game and telltale stopped being compelling to me after walking dead season 1. putting genuinely air-suck-in-through-teeth levels of pure reddit into your dialogue was not the way to get me back on side.
the video game equivalent of dreamworks plastering "from the people who made shrek" and hiring a boatload of celebrity actors with every new movie. there may be a peek in to what once was every so often, but its so minute and fleeting that it makes you question if it was ever truly there in the first instance.
probably dont take my word on this though. these types of games are fundamentally at odds with what i understand to be compelling in a video game. could have been a netflix playable show like when they ported minecraft story mode or made bandersnatch. i watched my friend play it in a discord call twice over and then gameshared it to see if it was from me just having watched and not really having cared but uh. nope. in fact its worse, me having my hands on it personally, because im then even more acutely aware of the fact that this is, quite literally, a series of stitched together mp4s. thats not a joke by the way.
when its not woefully boring, its painfully obnoxious and trite. it'll hopefully be yet another flavor of the week to be forgotten soon so i can stop fucking hearing about it as though its the second coming of christ despite it offering nothing that hasnt already been seen so many hundred thousand times before it.
controversially, i dont believe that this was snubbed for the game awards! this is on account of it being a mildly-above average adult animated series with occasional non-required button prompts and not a video game. i just dont get it. i boot a game to play a video game not to sit and watch the fucking thing the whole damn time. at least with even the most cutscene-dense story games there is at least gameplay afterwards. i truly do not understand it whatsoever. if you enjoy this then go nuts i guess but i will never understand why
site exclusive! ash's take on the story?
yeah it sucks. where it isn't obvious and done before, it's millennial reddit humor that does little to titilate me, and its clear that it was mostly banking on that because the story beats themselves are the most done-to-death superhero shit ever combined with the most done-to-death office "comedy" routine, garnished with an even more done-to-death love triangle. blonde blazer girl, me, personally, if you must know.
