Dispatch (PlayStation, PC, £24.99)
Verdict: Easy to love
Is Dispatch the easiest game ever made? And I don’t mean ‘easy’ in the sense of not being very difficult — though, in truth, it ISN’T very difficult — but in practically every other sense.
Let’s start with how easy it is on the eye and ear. Dispatch is a beautifully animated superhero cartoon for adults. Its characters are funny, sweary and enlivened by terrific voice acting from the likes of Hollywood’s Jeffrey Wright and Aaron Paul.
Then there’s its structure. Dispatch has been released episodically, with the eighth and final episode landing this week. These 45-minute-or-so gobbets of story and play are just perfect for some evening sofa time. They’re just so, well, easy to get into.
Going down: In Dispatch you play as Robert Robertson III, who is forced to take an office job after his robotic suit is destroyed.
The gameplay itself comes in two main forms. As Robert Robertson III — the latest in a line of Mecha Men, reduced to office work after his robotic suit got trashed — you have to choose how the story proceeds. Will you be nice in this next conversation? Or a total super-phallus?
But, as a ‘dispatcher’, you’ll also have to direct a discordant team of heroes to various emergencies. This is the more urgent type of gameplay, quickly figuring out the best weirdo for the job and issuing instructions accordingly.
Who asked for the hulk? As the dispatcher, you must find the right superhero for each job
Meanwhile, back at the office: Dispatch is a funny, sweary superhero game for grown-ups
If there’s a problem with Dispatch, it’s that so many of its parts are already familiar — from TV shows like The Boys and The Office, and games like Life Is Strange.
But when those parts go together so well, what does it matter? Just take it easy.
Anno 117: Pax Romana (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £49.99)
Verdict: Good to be governor
They say Rome wasn’t built in a day. But what if they’re wrong?
Thanks to the latest game in the Anno series, I’ve been creating some pretty spiffy ancient cities — roads, temples, fora, the whole shebang — in just hours.
Anno 117 is set during the Pax Romana, a roughly 200-year stretch when the Roman Empire was in full swing and swords ‘n’ sandals were all the rage.
You get to occupy a corner of that empire — the classically Mediterranean province of Latium or the misty, boggy land of Britain, sorry, Albion — and play governor. Can you bring more glory on Rome?
Friends, Romans, Governors: In Anno 117 you must bring glory to the Empire, by expanding it
This involves placing buildings on a landscape, of course. But it also involves managing resources, establishing trade routes, maintaining diplomatic relationships and… choosing your religion. Anno 117 features extensive options for following the Roman gods or submitting to strange Celtic ones.
If all that sounds like hard work, then perhaps you’re just not cut out for governorship.
But, in the spirit of other recent city-building games, Anno 117 does do a lot to streamline its complex mechanics and hide away its nittier-grittier options. Most players will welcome these changes, even if some series veterans will regard them as a step towards oversimplification.
Surely no one, though, will quibble with the end results. The cities that you make in Anno 117 are gorgeous things, whether you’re zoomed out and admiring their columns from afar, or zoomed in and watching your citizens go about their daily lives.
As old Julius almost said: I came, I saw, I constructed.
