One (video game)

One is a third person shooter style video game released for the PlayStation way back in 1997. Developed by Visual Concepts (The guys who did plenty of sports games, including Sega 2K), and published by ASC games. One follows the story of a John Cain, an amnesiac with no prior memories, wakes up with a fancy gun arm, and a rude awakening courtesy of a police helicopter launching a missile directly into Cain's room.

Gameplay mechanics are fairly simple: Smash everything from enemies, to the environment in order to build up more health and firepower. Both fire power and hit points are demonstrated by the color of Cain's health bar to the bottom right of the screen. It goes from Green, to Yellow, to Red, and finally becomes the most powerful Blue/silver pulse, which can be released as a screen clearing smart bomb. Besides the level up/health mechanic, there's definitely plenty of explosions to keep you busy, as well as some of the trickiest platforming for this style of game. If anything, there's at times, too many explosions, often times obscuring the screen juuuust enough to make jumping difficult.

While definitely a fun, but challenging game, it is a game very few have heard of, and attempting to try and find footage on YouTube is especially difficult, given the very common name of "One". Go ahead. give it a try. We'll wait.

In any event, it is a very well done game for its time, and has been available on the Playstation Network as of March 18th, 2010.

Tropes used in One (video game) include:

Arm Cannon - Cain wakes up with one of these.
Bottomless Magazines - At least for Cain's main gun.
Easy Amnesia - Cain wakes up without any pior memories as to how he got the nifty gun arm, or why the police are after him.
Pistol-Whipping - Part of Cain's melee attacks.
Stuff Blowing Up - Take this, crack it up to 11, and tear the knob OFF. The freakin' INTRO has Cain starting off with a bang as a police chopper sends a missle straight into his apartment.
Smart Bomb - If Cain manages to destroy enough stuff without getting hit, Cain gains one of these.
Throw-Away Guns - Any OTHER guns Cain finds.