Rent A Hero No. 1

New Dork, New Dork...it's a hell of a town. A very quircky adventure for your Xbox.

Underground cult hits aren't born?they're made. Just like Nintendo's Earthbound (and, more recently, Enix's R.A.D.), Rent A Hero No.1 seems expressly designed to become an obscure B-game classic?it's unpolished and controls strangely, but it's too weird and drop-dead funny to ignore if you're a very special sort of gamer.

A straight port of a three-year-old Japanese Dreamcast game, Rent A Hero stars a typical teenager with perhaps the greatest summer job ever: defender of justice. As the world's first superhero for hire, you must handle a staggering variety of jobs?halting bank robberies and rescuing kidnapped girls on one hand, helping rich old ladies with their book shopping on the other.

Basic gameplay proceeds action/RPG style with most of the game world available to you early on. The battle system is probably Rent A Hero's strongest trait?encounters run like a 3D Final Fight, and you gradually learn new combos and moves to deal with the criminal masterminds you'll discover later on. Unfortunately, this fighting system almost isn't used enough?most of the game is spent running around town endlessly, which is hard to take for long periods of time.

Typical Xbox users will be turned off by Rent A Hero immediately?the graphics are solid but low budget, and the game inexplicably doesn't support analog control, making play with the original Xbox pad physically harmful. For hardcore freaks, though, AIA's latest is worth at least a shot for its incredibly strange sense of humor. If the Earthbound sequel never makes it over here?well?at least you have this, right?

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