History OneManArmy / VideoGames

* Pit in ''VideoGame/KidIcarusUprising'', a hordes of monsters and even a God can't defeat one Pit with a weapon. Palutena does have more of an army than just him, but they're unreliable and so she usually doesn't bother sending them out.

--> '''Saren:''' I was afraid you wouldn't make it in time Shepard.

** [[https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/5ao6wl/the_normandy_teams_kill_count_counted_and/ Someone actually bothered to count]] all the enemies Shepard's team kills over the course of the series. Not counting cutscenes or off-screen kills, the total is still well over 5,600. Even if Shepard got as many kills as the rest of the team combined, that still makes basically ''every'' member of the Normandy Team a one-man army by the end of the series. Particularly Garrus and Tali, who are the only squad mates present on the team for all games and DLC. Assuming that Shepard killed as many enemies as everyone else combined and that each squad mate killed about the same amount of enemies in each game (these are averages- the exact numbers are dependent on the player's actions), Garrus and Tali each would have racked up ~322 kills during their adventures on the Normandy. Liara and Ashley/Kaidan are right behind them with "only" ~230 kills each.
*** Note also that this is only enemies killed in direct combat. If you count enemies taken out in story events, such as when the team blows up the Collector Base or the Geth Heretic Station, the total is well into the ''millions''. [[spoiler: Or the ''billions'', if you count all the Husks, Geth, and Reapers destroyed by Shepard firing off the Crucible in the Destroy ending of the third game.]]

** Lampshaded in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. On the Korlus mission, you are going through mercenaries like a hot knife through butter. Said mercenaries are an interstellar private BadassArmy: during the mission, they get sandwiched between the Normandy crew and hundreds of berserk tankgrown krogans: by the last third of the mission, you can hear them saying that they got rid of the krogans, but desperately need reinforcements as [[CurbStompBattle Shepard's unit is slaughtering them with ease.]] Eventually, their leader chastises them on the intercom:

** [[SerialEscalation Taken to a greater degree]] in The Arrival [[DownloadableContent DLC]], where s/he annihilates an entire base of infantry, engineers, [[CurbStompBattle elite soldiers, and heavy mechs]], without ANY squad members backing him/her up.

** In ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', despite being ''[[BrainwashedAndCrazy heavily indoctrinated]]'', the Cerberus forces encountered on Mars still manage to suffer a MassOhCrap at realising just who the Alliance has sent to take them down.
---> '''Cerberus Trooper''': Holy shit! They've got ''[[TheDreaded SHEPARD!]]''
** The ''SSV Normandy'' is a one-ship armada by the end of ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. This is even quantified in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', where the military contributions of military forces are expressed in terms of numerical "War Assets." Entire fleets of hundreds of frigates and cruisers and multiple dreadnoughts and carriers contribute about one hundred to one hundred and fifty points to the total each. The Normandy, by itself, contributes ''one hundred and fifteen points'', and the Citadel DLC - which lets it undergo yearly maintenance and gives shore leave to the crew - can buff that to ''one hundred and eighty-five'', twice the value of the Alliance Sixth Fleet. For comparison, the ''Destiny Ascension'', the massive dreadnought that served as the Citadel flagship in the first game, provides 70.

** Even more than the Normandy, each Reaper is a one-ship armada. Even the weakest Reapers take massive barrages of artillery or ships firing down on them to destroy them. It's implied that a Sovereign-class Reaper is a match for three of the most powerful non-Reaper ships in the galaxy, and it takes four to stand a somewhat decent chance of killing one. To be even more specific, each one of those non-Reaper ships fires the equivalent of [[HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure 3 Little Boys every 2-5 seconds.]] A single Sovereign-class Reaper fires the equivalent of ''35 Little Boys every 2-5 seconds''.

* The vast majority of arcade games made by Creator/{{Capcom}} in the 1980s and 1990s fit this trope. For instance: In ''[[VideoGame/NineteenFortyTwo 1942]]'', a single P-38 tries to shoot down the entire Japanese air force (in later sequels gameplay was also expanded to include sinking the Japanese navy). In ''VideoGame/{{Gunsmoke}}'' a lone gunman goes pistol-to-pistol with hundreds of outlaws, pistol-to-arrow with an entire Indian village, and even pistol-to-shuriken with a ninja squad. In ''VideoGame/FinalFight'', one brawler (two if you play with a friend) picks a fight with a huge criminal gang who have kidnapped the mayor's daughter and have an entire city completely terrorized. In ''VideoGame/GhostsNGoblins'', a solitary knight confronts an army of demons, undead creatures, and eventually Lucifer himself to save his princess. And in ''VideoGame/{{Commando}}'', one soldier (named "Super Joe" even though he doesn't technically fit the SuperSoldier trope) becomes quite literally a one-man army; armed with nothing but a machine gun and a handful of grenades, he has to fight his way through a jungle swarming with an endless number of enemy soldiers, with a few hostages to rescue along the way. There are lots more of these types of games in Capcom's library, many of them sequels or {{Spiritual Successor}}s of the originals.

** Ada Wong is the female equivalent of Leon, having faced off against zombies, other mutants, and a Tyrant while heavily injured and escaping the incoming nuclear bomb heading to Raccoon City in VideoGame/ResidentEvilUmbrellaChronicles. In VideoGame/ResidentEvil4 and VideoGame/ResidentEvil4Remake she faces off against an army of Ganado and other Las Plagas mutants all by her lonesome, hardly breaking a sweat. It's noticeable in VideoGame/ResidentEvil6 she's the only character to canonically have no partner in her campaign route.

* In the ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' series, nearly every playable protagonist qualifies, but special mentions include:

** Jill Valentine in VideoGame/ResidentEvil3Nemesis and ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil3Remake'' manages to escape Raccoon City while killing numerous zombies, mutants, and Umbrella's most powerful bioweapon with minimal help.

* In the ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' series, nearly everyone qualifies, but special mentions include:

** Several of the Records in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil3Remake'' require the player to kill a specific amount of enemies, either in total or with a specific firearm, across multiple playthroughs, which can make you feel a lot like the trope, especially with the bonus weapons from the Shop. The penultimate Record for these feats, rewarding for killing '''''2,000 enemies''''' over all playthroughs, is titled "The One Zombies Fear".

* In the ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' series:

** In the main quest of ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'', in order to fulfill the Nerevarine Prophesy, you need to be named the "Hortator" of the three Dunmeri Great Houses with holdings on Vvardenfell. A Hortator is a traditional Dunmer war-leader, implied to typically lead entire armies into battle. {{Justified}} however, as [[OneRiotOneRanger circumstances are such here]] that you will need to go into [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Red Mountain]] to face [[BigBad Dagoth]] [[PhysicalGod Ur]] on your own. Primarily, this is because [[spoiler:you have been [[IdealIllnessImmunity rendered immune to all disease]] (another requirement to fulfill the prophecy) while anyone you could bring along would risk catching a Blight disease, or worse, the Corprus Disease]].

-->'''[[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Ben "Yahztee" Croshaw]]''' ''(Just Cause 2 Review)'': Most of the story is basically "keep blowing shit up" and everything that passes for a boss fight shrivels pathetically in the face of Rico Rodriguez, the legendary son of [[Characters/ClassicalMythologyOlympians Zeus]] and a [[EthnicMenialLabor hispanic window cleaner]]

* ''Franchise/StarWars: VideoGame/RogueSquadron'' for the N64 has the player character essentially doing all the killing while your wingmen are useless. The sequel on the UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube at least has your wingmen look slightly more useful rather than flying around in scripted paths, but One Man Army comes back big time in one of the final missions where you must take on two Star Destroyers by yourself. Instead of a combined assault with friendly fighters, bombers and capital ships (which would, you know, make more sense) it's all up to the player to knock out these massive warships by himself while his allies fly around doing whatever. See also the "TIE Fighter" example below.

** Her ArchEnemy, Ridley, is a One-Dragon Army. It is implied that Samus is the only person in the galaxy who is actually a threat to him. In ''VideoGame/MetroidOtherM'', Adam Malkovich actually considers him more dangerous than an entire station full of Metroids. Metroids ''that have had their only weakness removed.''

This is practically the rule in video games, as many of them feature one PlayerCharacter destroying enemies by the ''hundreds''. For many players, it's the entire point of playing games.

* Plenty of such characters appear in ''VideoGame/ArcTheLad'', including the TokenMiniMoe.
* ''VideoGame/ArmyOfTwo'' has, well, a ''Two'' Man Army, but still.

* Solid Snake from ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' is described by other characters as being one on numerous occasions--but he isn't. It's a stealth game, meaning that if he decides to start Munchkining down the RedShirtArmy he's just asking to be slaughtered.
** In ''Solid,'' Meryl mentions Snake's reputation as a "one man army." Snake insists that he isn't.

* Every ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' protagonist is this almost by necessity. It helps that the [[DiegeticInterface Pip-Boy]] in all games contains a counter (under the "Stats" screen in the 3D games) that keeps track of all of the PC's kills, divided by type (people, ghouls, mutants, creatures, robots).

* In order to gain complete control of Los Santos, the protagonist of ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'' must kill in total thousands of rival gang members armed with AK-47s and other heavy weaponry, usually 30-40 per "territory", and that's not even counting police forces, mob gangsters, hitmen, FBI agents and the US military. Furthermore, because gang members are instantly replaced (or [[NonLethalKO healed by paramedics]]), it's possible for the player character to wipe out the same gang several times over in the course of minutes. Occasionally lampshaded:
-->'''Ken Rosenberg:''' Oh yeah, he's a real one man army! Real fuckin' dependable.
** In fact, all of the various ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' protagonists singlehandedly accrue impressive kill counts. Special mention goes to [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV Niko Bellic]] who's a war veteran, and whose presence determined which family controlled the criminal underground of Liberty City, and [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV Trevor Philips]], who went against hundreds of trained guards, hardened gang members, drug dealers, and even a ''platoon of heavily armed US Army'', just with some weapons and his LimitBreak ability, '''and won'''! Some of his notable kills even include [[spoiler: the Lost MC from the previous game, a BadassArmy in its own right]].

* Stranger the BountyHunter in ''Videogame/{{Oddworld}}: Stranger’s Wrath''. Although it’s optional as to whether enemies are dead or not, Stranger still bounties a heck of a lot of Outlaws. It’s taken even further when [[spoiler:Stranger is outed as a Steef]], meaning that greater amounts of enemies are now being thrown at him [[spoiler:due to ''his'' bounty]], and suddenly there isn't as much pressure to keep enemies alive anymore...

* In ''Videogame/Cyberpunk2077'', V will likely end up carving their way through a majority of Night City's various gangsters, criminals and corporate security in their path to survive. This is taken further in one of potential endgame routes in which [[spoiler:they decide to go on a suicidal one-person siege on Arasaka Tower in an attempt to get to their labratory and find a way to save themselves without putting any of their allies at risk]].

* Kazuma Kiryu from ''VideoGame/{{Yakuza}}'' has taken on yakuza clans, Chinese triad, Korean mafia, street punks, assassins, ''tigers'', and everything the criminal underworld can throw at him, only to beat it all down with his fists and keep on going. [[RedBaron The Dragon of Dojima]] is at the top of the food chain for a reason. In ''Yakuza 5'', he takes on a literal small army of yakuza at the climax of Part 1 and ''wins''.
** Goro Majima is pretty much Kiryu's equal in this, having on [[VideoGame/Yakuza2 several]] [[VideoGame/Yakuza0 occasions]] beaten entire yakuza families singlehandedly, and taken on the same assortment of criminals, street thugs, and hitmen (oh, and [[VideoGame/YakuzaDeadSouls zombies]]) without any problem.
** In general, most of the protagonists of the series are all capable of fighting through legions of goons though as far as in-game reputation Kiryu, Majima and Saejima are the ones most renowned as legendary asskickers. Completely subverted with Ichiban Kasuga, who due to the GenreShift from brawler to turn-based JRPG, is portrayed as comparatively weak and never fights without a team of comrades [[spoiler:all of whom only succeed in making Saejima and Majima break a sweat while Kiryu is completely unimpressed]].

** [[spoiler:Fenix]] is certainly no slouch in battle, being capable of slicing up Zerglings in a single attack. He's gotten even better in ''VideoGame/StarCraftII''. One of the abilities in [[VideoGame/LegacyOfTheVoid Legacy of the Void]] is to call him down to a location for 30 seconds to fight for you, [[LightningBruiser and that's generally all the time he'll need]].

* ''VideoGame/StarCraft'':

* In the original ''VideoGame/StarFox'' and its N64 remake, the BigBad controls a massive war machine aimed at conquering the Lylat System. The freedom-loving Cornerians are hopelessly outmatched and outnumbered... until they call upon the help of the Star Fox team. Flying in a small squad of ultra-advanced Arwing starfighters, Fox [=McCloud=] and his 3 teammates lead a daring counterattack against Andross, obliterating hundreds upon hundreds of enemy craft, destroying entire fleets of battleships, and defeating numerous boss enemies. Turns out the teammates don't even contribute much, it's all the player-controlled character carving a swath of destruction through the Mook army.