Well, we’re coming up on the end of 2025, and what an ending it’s proving to be, on my end. My wife and I got back home yesterday, threading the needle between closures of the Mackinac Bridge: one due to an, er…incident that thankfully was resolved safely, and the other due to weather. The weather-related incident is ongoing; it rolled in a few hours after we got home, and dumped over two feet of snow in less than 24 hours, with high winds making for some pretty high drifts. As a result, neither of us had to go back to work today, since pretty much the entire city is shut down. All in all, I think we really lucked out. Which brings us to today’s word.

croupier, noun – a person who runs a gambling table

Learned from: Dispatch (PC, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Playstation 5)

Developed by AdHoc Studio

Published by AdHoc Studio (2025)

Dispatch is a title that grabbed my attention as soon as I saw the first trailer. Written by some of the talent from the old Telltale Studios (of The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us fame), Dispatch casts you as an Iron Man-equivalent character who loses his suit during a fight with his nemesis. Unlike Tony Stark, however, your guy isn’t rich, so he can’t just rebuild and start over. Dejected, and suddenly directionless, he gets recruited into a program for rehabilitating supervillains, acting as their dispatcher for jobs. The logic being, even if he doesn’t have the suit, he still has the tactical mind of a hero, and can still do some good.

What follows is something of an office comedy with metahumans, as you try to find a new purpose in life, and form relationships (both good and bad) with this band of misfits. One of them is a winged assassin named Coupé, which I understand is French for “to cut.” But there’s a scene where the team is all talking at one point about doing something after work, and someone (maybe Punch Up, the 3-foot-tall circus strongman with the strong Irish accent), says Coupé wouldn’t have much fun since she’d have to be manning the roulette table or something. Punch Up does not speak French. Though, as mix-ups go, even knowing what a croupier is (as Coupé herself angrily points out), is still kind of impressive.

Dispatch tells a great story, full of quirky humor, difficult choices, and oddball characters who end up strangely endearing by the end.