Rent-A-Hero was a pig in a poke–I had ordered it from England
without knowing anything about it other than that it was an adventure game. The
cover art was pretty garish, so I was kind of reluctant to play it, but I figured
what the hell and tried it anyway. Boy, was I in for a treat. Rent-A-Hero is
an example of adventure game as art.

The plot is yet another hackneyed retelling
of the ultimate battle between good and evil. You, as Rodrigo, rent out your services
to rescue princesses. Unfortunately, there’s not much money in it, and the other
rental heroes get much better jobs than you. Fortunately for you, a dwarf needs
someone to find his wife, and all of the other heroes are completely booked up,
so you get the job by default. Well, finding the dwarf’s wife is just the beginning
of your quest to defeat the ultimate evil mentioned above and save the world.
While the plot is tried and true, it is rendered in a refreshing manner,
and I give it an A.

The graphics in Rent-A-Hero are, simply
put, stunning. In fact, I wanted to use all of my multitudes of screenshots because
I had such a hard time choosing the few that appear above. The cut scenes are
breathtaking, and the care that was taken in drawing the backgrounds was very
evident. It consists of 3D characters on 2D backgrounds, in what the developers
call 2.5D. Not since The Neverhood have I seen a game that was as pleasurable
just to watch, and the backgrounds were at least as good as those in the Broken
Sword games. The characters were drawn in such a way that they had, well,
character, and even the ugly ones were extremely appealing. I could gush for another
couple of paragraphs about the beauty of this game, but then I’d have to get out
my thesaurus to find new words for fantastic, and it’s not worth the effort, so
just take a look at the screenshots above to get a taste for yourself. As for
me, I give them a resounding A+ and two thumbs up.

Gameplay is pretty
straightforward. You click on stuff to interact with it in whatever way, be it
speaking or using or picking up, and you usually have a small inventory, although
this is not what I would call an inventory-oriented game. There is also a fair
bit of conversation, but mostly there is figuring stuff out. All of the puzzles
are integrated into the plot to the extent that you don’t really realize you are
even doing puzzles. The game is pretty easy for the seasoned adventurer, which
is a big minus for me because I really didn’t want it to end quite so soon. The
only walkthrough I could find on the Internet is in German, which I don’t speak,
so I had to actually muddle through the whole game myself without any hints, in
what must be a first for me. I was kind of proud of myself, but in reality, if
you get stuck, you can just go look at everything and click on everything again
and something’s bound to change. One other noteworthy feature: the game didn’t
crash once, even with all of my TSRs running in the background, and you can even
Alt-Tab to another program. Bug-free! What a novel concept! The game should get
an A just for that reason alone, but my A in this category is based on
ease of use and the all-important fun factor, plus, and this is a biggie in my
book, no dying and no dead ends, and another biggie–no action and no jumping.

The
music is fantastic. It was recorded by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and
each piece exactly suits its scene. There is enough variety and the pieces are
long enough that the music never gets old, and I lingered in a couple of spots
just to listen a bit longer.

Rent-A-Hero was originally produced
in German and later translated to English, and the voice acting was, surprisingly
enough, perfect, even down to the lip-synching being, well, in sync. Rodrigo,
the hero, was a nice-guy, well-meaning-but-nevertheless-bumbling, mild-mannered
Milquetoast sort of character, bringing to mind the English actor Hugh Grant.
Usually, in even the finest of adventure games (as well as Disney animated features),
there is always at least one character that is totally over the top–not so in
Rent-A-Hero (a welcome relief to your easily annoyed reviewer).

Sound
effects were also perfect–but hard to describe in this or any review. I might
just start omitting any discussion of sound effects in my future reviews, but
this is the part where the sound effects are traditionally discussed so I guess
I am fulfilling my mission.

Suffice it to say, the entire sounds category
gets an A.

All in all, this is the nicest game I have had the pleasure
to play in quite some time, and it was a welcome surprise in this drought of adventure
games. The only major drawbacks were that it was too short and too easy. However,
it would be a good introduction to adventure gaming for those who have never tried
it before–even my husband, who only plays hockey on the computer, was
drawn in by Rent-A-Hero. Plus it’s rated for all ages, but there is one
crude synonym for “feces” and one very brief sex scene (which could
probably be avoided by the wary prude). Rent-A-Hero’s final grade
is an A.

System Requirements:
Pentium 133 MHz processor
Windows 95/98
16 MB RAM
2 MB graphics card
[I don’t have a graphics card but I do have a graphics chip with 8 MB
video RAM, and the game ran flawlessly]
6X CD-ROM drive
DirectX 6.0 (included)

Sound card