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| 13 | %% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1381124592028919400 |
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| 17 | [[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/GodOfWar https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/one-man-army__god-of-war2_6181.png]]]] |
| 18 | [[caption-width-right:350:[[Characters/GodOfWarSeriesKratos He]]'s [[KillTheGod killed gods]]. 'Gods', as in ''more than one''. What makes you think armies will slow him down?]] |
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| 20 | OneManArmy in Video Games. |
| 21 | ---- |
| 22 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 23 | |
| 24 | [[folder:A-B]] |
| 25 | * ''VideoGame/AceCombat'' is the best example of this trope as allied pilots are nothing more than moving distractions but the player massacres an entire country's air force (and in some games, army and navy, too). |
| 26 | ** This isn't ''entirely'' true in ''VideoGame/AceCombat5TheUnsungWar'' or ''VideoGame/AceCombatZeroTheBelkanWar'', where your wingmen will occasionally shoot down enemy planes and destroy ground targets. That said, a grand majority of the property damage in the game is caused by the player. Note as a contrast that while the notoriety of Wardog Squadron in ''5'' is for the whole flight group, there's only one Demon Lord of the Round Table in ''Zero''... |
| 27 | ** ''VideoGame/AceCombat6FiresOfLiberation'' has allied units who are actually useful; and under the right circumstances, can jack up any target with a MacrossMissileMassacre. This can be very essential to certain achievement runs (such as guns-only Campaigns or those where you have to fly only one of the three plane types) and especially when it comes to taking down Strigons. |
| 28 | ** Actually invoked in ''Unsung War'' in Operation Katina, which stars the protagonist, Mobius 1, from the previous game. The operation narrator ''states outright'' that Mobius 1 has a higher kill ratio than an '''entire squadron'''. The narrator continues that [[TheRemnant a sizable force of Erusean veterans]] has risen up to start another war, and that Mobius 1's job is to take them out... ''[[OneRiotOneRanger by himself]]''. |
| 29 | ** Acknowledged in ''Ace Combat Zero'': |
| 30 | --->''"Head Operations has recognized you as '''an indispensable component in this war."''''' |
| 31 | ** ''VideoGame/AceCombat3Electrosphere'' plays around with this, as Nemo (at least [[BadExportForYou in the Japanese version]]) can choose to switch sides at several points, and save for the terrorist faction Ouroboros (who gets ''two'' story branches where you join them but are ultimately destroyed no matter which path you take) whichever group he joins ends up on top at best (General Resource or Neucom) and still remaining a major faction at worst (UPEO [[PaperTiger doesn't have the resources to stay relevant]] if Nemo doesn't stick around). Then the OmegaEnding reveals [[spoiler:Nemo was an AI and the entire conflict was a simulation to create a pilot specifically to beat Abyssal Dision, the leader of Ouroboros, with Nemo's ability to influence the war through his skill mostly a byproduct of the need to test every possible outcome of the war; since every route ends with Dision dead, typically by Nemo directly shooting him down, Simon then releases Nemo into the real world to make one of those routes a reality.]] |
| 32 | * ''VideoGame/AfterBurner Climax'' has your Jaguar Flight sent to stop the enemy from using nuclear weapons. Your wingmen don't do much, really, and your plane has BottomlessMagazines along with the MacrossMissileMassacre-enabling "Climax Mode" LimitBreak. The enemy sends what feels like their entire air force at you. HilarityEnsues. |
| 33 | * The player character can potentially be this if the player knows the right commands to input in ''VideoGame/AIDungeon2''. Typing something like 'destroy army in one punch' can ''actually result in the player character doing just that''. It's not ''always'' full proof though; sometimes typing something like that will end up with the player ''trying'' it, only for such to [[EpicFail fall flat on its face]]. |
| 34 | * Alan Wake in, well, ''VideoGame/AlanWake''. For a novelist who never fired a gun outside of a shooting range, he is impressively adept at gunning down the Taken. It turns out, however, that [[spoiler: he gained this ability by literally giving it to himself. Thanks to the supernatural effects of Cauldron Lake, everything he wrote as part of his novel "Departure" came true - and he wrote himself as the novel's protagonist who faced hordes of Taken and barely survived.]] |
| 35 | * In ''VideoGame/AlphaPrime'', your MissionControl speculates that you might be TheMole when he points out how unlikely it is that you could have defeated so many enemy soldiers unless it was all staged. |
| 36 | ** "And don't say they want to kill you. Those boys keep plugging away, but somehow they still can't seem to finish the job. They can't seem to shoot you properly. It's a pure miracle you're still alive. And miracles are always suspicious." |
| 37 | * ''VideoGame/ANNOMutationem'': Ann Flores is a highly-skilled ActionGirl that singlehandedly takes on a entire onslaught of {{mooks}} from an organized street gang, weaponized soldiers from a private NGOSuperpower with an array of advanced tech and {{Mini Mecha}}s at their conveyance, to even destroying hostile beasts and supernatural abominations hailing from an EldritchLocation, prevailing through all this to [[BigSisterInstinct rescue her younger brother]]. |
| 38 | * In ''VideoGame/AquamanBattleForAtlantis'', Aquaman stands on the front lines and singlehandedly defeats the enemy armies and their leaders by himself, while Mera, Dolphin and Garth stay behind to protect Atlantis. |
| 39 | %% Needs Context * Plenty of such characters appear in ''VideoGame/ArcTheLad'', including the TokenMiniMoe. |
| 40 | %% ZCE * ''VideoGame/ArmyOfTwo'' has, well, a ''Two'' Man Army, but still. |
| 41 | * Every protagonist of an ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' game: |
| 42 | ** By late-game, Altaïr of ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedI'' is ''literally'' hacking and slashing his way through entire ''armies'' of Saracen and Crusader troops. He may be a mortal man, but he surpasses {{Determinator}} status at the speed of light and lands squarely into ImplacableMan territory. |
| 43 | *** In [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRevelations Revelations]], we see what decades of studying [[spoiler: The Apple of Eden]] can do. Altaïr's fights were never exactly close, but [[spoiler: killing a village full of soldiers ''all at the same time'']] is a gamebreaker in the most awesome sense of the term. |
| 44 | ** In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII'' there's Ezio Auditore da Firenze, who starts his RoaringRampageOfRevenge at age seventeen. It lasts for ''twenty-three years'', during which he decimates an entire faction of Templar conspiracists, [[TheDreaded becomes the most feared man]] in all of ''[[GratuitousItalian Italia]]'' to the point of [[ShroudedInMyth being made into the kind of story people tell each other when they don't want to sleep at night]] while he's still ''alive'', and murders his way through at least a thousand of their guards/allies. Oh, and [[spoiler:he hunts down and administers a CurbStompBattle to ''the Pope'']]. |
| 45 | *** In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedBrotherhood'' this actually becomes even more the case, even before [[spoiler:he cuts or sneaks his way through one more army to confront Cesare Borgia for the last time]]. It's possible that the first potential recruits were actually inspired by him openly fighting off Borgia troops ''across the bridge/river from the papal apartments''. |
| 46 | *** Even his recruits get into the act once promoted to the highest rank, Assassino, at level 10 -- Smoke Bombs + Pistol + as many Health squares as the final boss = the Call Assassins button becomes [[GameBreaker an "I WIN" button]] against most Mook groups. |
| 47 | *** Ezio, without his brotherhood, is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCTtIIW1WA0&feature=feedf back to his old ways]] in [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRevelations Revelations]]. |
| 48 | *** The trope is called attention to at the start of ''Brotherhood.'' |
| 49 | ---->'''Ezio:''' Checking up on me, Uncle?\ |
| 50 | '''Mario:''' What can I say? We sent one man against an entire army. I was worried! |
| 51 | *** And in the intro of ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRevelations'', Ezio (who is by that point in his [=50s=]) taking on a regiment of Templar soldiers by himself... after taking an arrow in the shoulder. True, they manage to capture him, but only because he gets a vision of Altaïr at precisely the wrong moment. |
| 52 | ** ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII'' continues the tradition with Connor, who is depicted in the E3 trailer taking on an entire British regiment ''by himself'' in order to assassinate their commander. In so doing, he rallies the Continental troops who had up until that point been suffering a crushing defeat. To this end, Connor has developed skills specifically designed to help him deal with massed musket fire, including taking cover during volleys and using the bodies of his enemies as a BulletproofHumanShield. |
| 53 | *** He doesn't actually kill that many people in the trailer (less than a dozen). He just creates so much chaos among the enemy ranks (including slaying the British general) that the American counterattack manages to succeed. Then again, the trailer ends before the battle is over. |
| 54 | *** Over the course of the series, Desmond gains the skills of his ancestors via the Bleeding Effect. By the end of the third game [[spoiler: he takes on the entirety of the Roman branch of Abstergo by himself, limiting himself to knife and gun before revealing that he has complete control over the Apple now.]] |
| 55 | ** ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIV'' focuses on Connor's grandfather Edward Kenway, a notorious pirate with a penchant for DualWielding swords and strapping four pistols. As detailed by Blackbeard in a trailer, he has once seen Edward clear the deck of a Spanish galleon like it was nothing. This can also apply to Edward's ship the ''Jackdaw''. With proper upgrades and proper sailing, the ''Jackdaw'' (a converted Spanish brig) can easily take down a man-o'-war or two. |
| 56 | * The game ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}} & Obelix XXL'', despite having two characters, pretty much embodies this trope, as Asterix is the one you play as most, and thus he is the one-man army, while the significantly stronger Obelix is AI-controlled and isn't exactly that useful. In the very last section, you also have to take down ''1000'' Romans. |
| 57 | ** By that point in the game, you should be able to purchase a special attack that enforces this trope even more: it transforms Asterix into a powerful tornado, sending literally hundreds of {{Mook}}s flying. Just one or two of them can wipe these armies. |
| 58 | * [[VideoGame/AsurasWrath Asura]] takes this to higher levels, taking down enemy after enemy like there's no tomorrow, from massive buddha mooks to PLANET SIZED DEMIGODS. |
| 59 | * ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'': |
| 60 | ** While nowhere near as epic as [=BG2=], being a lower level game and all, the kill count can also get pretty high in the first game. There is one area that is basically a village of the extremely xenophobic xvarts, and if you decide to go through there you'll have to kill several dozens of them. The BigBad even acknowledges how dangerous you are in his letters to his hired assassins as you kill more and more of them over the course of the game. Also in this game you can meet Drizzt do Urden who is a one-man army in his own right, slicing through hordes of gnolls (and your party, if you are so foolish as to challenge him) without any effort. |
| 61 | ** In ''Baldur's Gate 2'', quite a few antagonists are aware that the protagonist is [[spoiler:the spawn of a god, with the potential of ascending to godhood]], and of his/her experience at killing high level monsters, but none are particularly impressed by it. However, in the ''Throne of Bhaal'' ExpansionPack, an entire nation builds a task force for the express purpose of stopping the PC, and one of the more interesting sequences shows the villain, a high level NPC with multiple monstrous [[TheDragon Dragons]], panicking at the thought of the PC invading her lair. Even Elminster doesn't want to fight you. |
| 62 | * [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname The Kid]] from ''VideoGame/{{Bastion}}'' hacks his way through multiple small armies over the course of the game. |
| 63 | * ''Franchise/BatmanArkhamSeries'': Batman, in every game. He's able to effortlessly beat down groups of thugs first in an island-based asylum, but in every subsequent game can effectively reduce the conscious criminal population of an entire city to 0...in one night. And that's not even counting the supervillains unfortunate enough to get in his way. |
| 64 | ** The combat challenges of every game are built around the player going 4 rounds through an increasing number of thugs, some of them armed. In ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamOrigins'' the 100 to 1 mode was added, where you can choose either Batman or Deathstroke and have fun pummeling through 100 thugs and ninjas. In ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamCity'', on the other hand, there's a DLC mission where an endless string of {{Mooks}} will drop from the ceiling or enter through a door, including ninjas, one of the Abramovici brothers, and a Titan subject, and the objective is to beat on them for three minutes, with the highest objective being one million points. |
| 65 | ** This isn't even a case of gameplay and story segregation, either. The Joker is well aware that none of his regular mooks stand a chance against Batman, [[BadBoss and he'll let them know it]]. |
| 66 | --->'''The Joker:''' Come on, boys, he's JustOneMan.... well, one man dressed like a lunatic and armed to the teeth, HAHA! GO GET 'EM! |
| 67 | ** Taken to its logical conclusion in ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamKnight'', in which Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight bring a literal army, with guns, tanks, mines, and drones, all specifically trained and/or designed to counter and defeat the Batman... and they ''still'' lose. |
| 68 | * In ''VideoGame/TheBattleForMiddleEarth'', it's possible to rack up thousands of vanquished enemies with [[TheArchmage Gandalf]] '''in a single battle''' using his Word of Power attack. Having tens of thousands of kills at the end of a campaign is not unheard of. |
| 69 | ** Your custom heroes from the sequel can be this trope, too, given that you've selected the right powers. Some players put all their skill points into armour, which makes the hero capable of surviving three times the damage a normal hero unit can take, and then give him powers that allow him to [[CurbStompBattle curbstomp]] a whole squad of enemy heroes or monsters. |
| 70 | *** Non-campaign maps will have a stealthed Gollum running around. Killing Gollum gets you the One Ring, and if you take that to your fortress you can recruit a Ring Hero. For Men, Elves and Dwarves it's a powered-up Galadriel... but if you're playing an Evil faction (Mordor, Isengard, Goblins, or Angmar) you get Sauron, who can pretty much wipe out an entire army and an enemy base ''by himself''. |
| 71 | * ''VideoGame/BladestormTheHundredYearsWar'' has this complex, where, at high levels, the main character, even without aid, can destroy a whole army. However, at similar levels, it counters this again, where the protagonist is incredibly weak without men. |
| 72 | * Every player character in ''VideoGame/BillyVsSnakeman'' is considered to be this simply by dint of being ninja. The battles on Kaiju Island requires you to wade through hundreds and hundreds of minions, avoiding their attacks simply by being too ninja-awesome to hit. [[spoiler:Or you can just crush them with your kaiju form.]] Logs from The War That Broke The World reveal that the kaiju were terrified of the ninja's apparent inability to lose against anything but a 0% success chance. [[spoiler:Having the ability to SaveScum helped.]] |
| 73 | * ''VideoGame/BioShock'' |
| 74 | ** In ''VideoGame/{{BioShock|1}}'', Jack fights his way through Rapture ''directly after'' surviving a plane crash, destroying at the very least four heavily armored and powerful Big Daddies [[spoiler:at the ripe old age of [[KidHero four]]. That said, he was designed that way...]] Granted, most of his enemies don't even have ''guns''... |
| 75 | ** Subject Delta from ''VideoGame/BioShock2'' as well. |
| 76 | ** Mark Meltzer from the ''Something in the Sea'' ARG, who is just another ordinary man who didn't know the existence of Rapture until his daughter, Cindy, was kidnapped by a Big Sister. He fought his way through Rapture armed with a ''revolver'' and came very close to saving his daughter...[[spoiler: Until Lamb caught him and made him into a Big Daddy.]] |
| 77 | ** Booker [=DeWitt=] from ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite''. Before he even meets Elizabeth, he kills nearly a hundred trained police officers/soldiers, a few of whom with his bare hands, in about two hours. By the end of the game, his personal kill count is at over seven hundred, including a couple dozen SuperpoweredMooks. The extremity of his rampage is even lampshaded toward the end. |
| 78 | *** Booker's backstory mentions that as a teenager [[spoiler: he fought at the Battle of Wounded Knee, where his rampage was [[TeensAreMonsters so brutal]] that he's very likely the reason it's known today as a ''Massacre''. Despite being praised as a "Hero" by his fellow soldiers, he was absolutely [[YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame horrified and disgusted]] by [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone what he had done]]]]. |
| 79 | *** Averted with the player character of ''Burial At Sea'', who's weak in a stand-up fight and probably won't end up killing more than a couple dozen enemies at most. Stealth is heavily encouraged in this DLC as a single enemy can cut you down if you're not careful. |
| 80 | * Despite being a GlassCannon in actual gameplay, this is the reputation bestowed upon Ragna the Bloodedge in ''Franchise/BlazBlue'', who has singlehandedly managed to wipe out several Library institutions and [[GoodIsNotNice kill every single man and woman inside]]. |
| 81 | * In the World War 2 game ''VideoGame/BlazingAngels'', you play as a pilot known as 'Captain'. Your accomplishments by the end of the game include destroying half of the Blitz bomber force, stopping the Blitzkreig at Dunkirk, destroying the entire Midway invasion force, destroying virtually the entire Pearl Harbor attack force, raiding the Japanese base of Rabaul and devastating the airfield there, taking out the top secret Nazi nuclear project, destroying the entire D-Day bunker network, stopping Operation Bodenplatte, destroying the Berlin radar network, surviving a three minute dogfight with the rest of Germany's air force by yourself, and taking out an elite jet squadron (while they taunt you by saying they have jets and you don't). |
| 82 | * Bob from ''VideoGame/BlobWars''. |
| 83 | * Once everything's been said and done, [[HunterOfMonsters the Hunter]] from ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'' will have put down thousands of TorchesAndPitchforks-wielding mobs and [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent Beasts]], a handful of [[AnimalisticAbomination Cleric Beasts]], hundreds of monstrosities from the nightmare realms, hundreds to thousands of [[OurZombiesAreDifferent intelligent Pthumerian zombies]], dozens of mages and wraiths, hundreds of [[BigCreepyCrawlies giant spiders, flies, and other animalistic abominations]], half a dozen [[EldritchAbomination Great Ones]] as well as dozens of [[{{Precursors}} Pthumerians]] and [[HunterOfHisOwnKind hostile Hunters]] -- each one of them a one-man army in their own right -- including The First Hunter himself, his prize student and a [[HumanoidAbomination Great One/Hunter Hybrid.]] |
| 84 | * ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' if you're playing solo: You'll easily rack up the ten thousand corpses required to get the "I am become death" achievement. |
| 85 | [[/folder]] |
| 86 | |
| 87 | [[folder:C-D]] |
| 88 | * The ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'' games were intentionally intended to avert this by using a more team-based single-player game, and having a campaign that shows the war from multiple perspectives--given the improbably large body count the player still racks up at times, they were only partially successful. The first game's British campaign in particular almost immediately forgets about the team-based aspect in favor of sending you and at most two other people to sabotage German dams and battleships, which ends up involving killing a ''lot'' of Nazis by yourself. The attempt in the first game is largely useless regardless, as allied {{NPC}}s and enemies will stand point-blank discharging their weapons at each other. Eventually the player will lose all of his allies unless he takes over the killing. |
| 89 | ** In ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty4ModernWarfare'', it will vary within the mission; in the first, "Crew Expendable," you can literally let the AI do all the work for at least the first quarter, just following from the rear, until the first skirmish where there's a realistic chance for the enemy to hit you. Conveniently, you are spared poor orders-following AI by not having control over your team at all. |
| 90 | ** In ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyWorldAtWar'''s multiplayer, if a player on the [[SemperFi Marine Raider]] team gets a high enough killstreak, their character sometimes yells, "I'm a one-man army!" in what seems to be this trope combined with [[LampshadeHanging lampshading]]. |
| 91 | ** One of the multiplayer perks in ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2'', which lets you switch classes without having to die and respawn, is literally named One Man Army. |
| 92 | ** ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps'' has a late game revelation that [[spoiler:Viktor Reznov was just a hallucination of Alex Mason after their escape from Vorkuta. This means that Mason wiped out his half of Rebirth Island single-handedly.]] |
| 93 | ** ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare3 Modern Warfare 3]]'' has the "Specialist" strike package, allowing a player to actually gain more perks as he makes kills - managing to get 8 within one life gives that player the advantages of ''nearly every perk and weapon proficiency in the game''. The challenge for earning the 8 kills in one life bonus is even called "OMA". |
| 94 | ** ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsII'' gives us [[BigBad Raúl Menendez]], who's a one-man army ''even by the standards of the series''. In gameplay he can sustain damage that easily kills the other playable characters, and can mow down Panamanian soldier after Panamanian soldier with just a machete; try doing that with anyone else. Even story-wise, he's shown to be fully capable of slaughtering his way through multiple {{Red Shirt}}s, and he's only ever subdued involuntarily by A; four men with a ''very'' strong sedative, or B; [[TheHero David Mason]]. |
| 95 | * 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/CommandoCapcom'', 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. |
| 96 | * All of the ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'' protagonists fall into this category. BigBad Dracula is no slouch either, particularly in the ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaLordsofShadow Lords of Shadow]]'' reboot. Watch him in action in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUcUz5Vo6iw this trailer]] for ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaLordsOfShadow2 Lords of Shadow 2]]''. '''''WARNING''''': ''SPOILERS''. |
| 97 | * In ''VideoGame/CaveStory'', the protagonist destroys the Demon Crown (an ArtifactOfDoom granting its wearer insane power) and the island's Core (apparently a powerful conduit of magic); both of which had destroyed armies of combat robots in the past. And as an encore, in the good ending [[spoiler:he's joined by ActionGirl Curly Brace and the two of them kill the sorcerer who created the Demon Crown.]] |
| 98 | * Another example of a One Woman Army is Tanya Adams. Though in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer: Red Alert 1'' she can only blow up buildings and kill infantry, and only if you specifically order her to kill that infantry, in ''Red Alert 2'', she automatically fires on advancing infantry (with pistols, but long before she's in range of their assault rifles), she can swim even in nearly frozen rivers, and use C4 on ships, buildings, and tanks (in ''[=RA2=]'', as with many games, tanks have no machine guns, making them [[CripplingOverspecialization weak against infantry]]). The only thing that can stop her besides air power and overwhelming force are base defenses like sentry guns and Tesla coils. There are several missions where she takes out entire bases with little backup. |
| 99 | ** The "commando" units in the ''Tiberium'' series ([[CripplingOverspecialization as long as the enemy doesn't have vehicles]]), and Havoc in particular in ''Renegade'' (''even'' if the enemy has vehicles). |
| 100 | *** Havoc was part of Dead 6, a crack commando group with specialists for each group. Havoc is basically the jack of all trades, imagine what his teammates would do in their field. |
| 101 | *** Die, mostly. You fight alongside them for a short time in one mission and can see each of them in action in an earlier mission. The AI isn't all that great, but something tells me that using a rocket launcher or grenade launcher at point-blank range isn't smart. [[ColdSniper Deadeye]] is capable of one-shotting any infantry that get in his way, though. |
| 102 | *** The Nod Cyborg Commando from Tiberian Sun is probably the strongest candidate for this in the [=RTSes=]: it's one of the strongest units in the game, bar none. It [[InvertedTrope inverts]] the usual CripplingOverspecialization of "commando" units by having a weapon that's good enough to destroy tanks and buildings in a couple hits (and it's a OneHitKill against infantry and light vehicles), is MadeOfIron, can regenerate by standing in Tiberium, and can fit into subterranean [=APCs=] for surprise attacks. Ghost Stalker has many of the same abilities for the GDI, except without the MadeOfIron part. |
| 103 | ** In the expansions to the first Red Alert, the Soviets prototype a cybernetic soldier called Volkov. His first mission consists of [[CurbStompBattle wiping out dozens of Allied troops]], [[SerialEscalation buildings, tanks, and a battleship]], finally ramming the point home by [[spoiler:[[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu killing Tanya]] ]]. Understandably, this worries the Allies... |
| 104 | ** Colonel Burton from ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer: Generals'' is described as such. The man can mow down infantry with just a couple shots, and even vehicles and buildings don't hold out long against his souped-up [[{{BFG}} OICW]], he can plant both remote-detonated and [[TimeBomb timer-controlled]] C4 charges, silently off infantry with his combat knife, and then make his getaway by climbing sheer cliff. While stealthed. |
| 105 | ** [[ColdSniper Pathfinders]] in ''Generals''. A single Pathfinder basically creates a no-go zone for all infantry short of a heavy ZergRush. A ''squad'' of Pathfinders can literally kill hundreds of foot soldiers in under a minute. [[CripplingOverspecialization Though they can't do anything against vehicles.]] |
| 106 | * Michael Ford in ''VideoGame/TheConduit'' and ''VideoGame/{{Conduit 2}}''. |
| 107 | * This occurs in the ''Conflict'' games, "Desert Storm" and "Desert Storm II: Back to Baghdad". In these two games, despite having a team of four highly-trained and specialised soldiers -- a rifleman, sniper, heavy weapons specialist and demolitions expert/engineer -- players were capable of completing each mission of the games with just the heavy weapons specialist, Mick Connors. His skill with a light machine gun and anti-tank weaponry, coupled with the game's [[ImprobableAimingSkills auto-aim system]], [[BagOfHolding bottomless backpacks]], and more than enough ammo to supply an army in each level, made Connors capable of carrying out every mission he appears in solo. Though he would need to be given mission-dependent equipment from his comrades such as C4 and designators at the start of each level. |
| 108 | ** This is lampshaded in Conflict: Global Storm (aka Global Terror in the US), where in the training level Control comments that "With the possible exception of Connors, no soldier is a one-man army". |
| 109 | *** Still, the very first level in the Campaign of Global Storm begins with the player assuming control of just Connors, who, despite being captured, beaten, and tortured, manages to overpower one of his captors and single-handedly secure the small prison his team-mates are being held in -- optionally with just a combat knife! |
| 110 | * ''Conqueror: 1086 AD'' asks the player to do a lot of castle storming. You can assemble an army and storm with a healthy collection of nights and bowmen. Or you can do it your damn self. The latter option is more efficient. |
| 111 | * Subverted in ''VideoGames/ConquerorsBlade''. Your hero is a pretty awesome fighter compared to the lowly rank and file, but ''no'' hero can charge right into the middle of the enemy army all by himself and expect to come out alive. It's even difficult to take on one ''unit'' of troops all by yourself. Heavy classes and the self-healing Nodachi can survive better than the rest, but even they will still die eventually. |
| 112 | * ''{{VideoGame/Contra}}''. |
| 113 | ** Technically, it's an example of a two-man army since there are two main characters. |
| 114 | ** Actually, it's more like a [[KonamiCode 30 man army]] if you think about it. |
| 115 | * The Silencers from ''VideoGame/{{Crusader}}'' are described as an entire unit of one-man armies. Given how a skilled player can practically dance through levels and has probably killed thousands of enemy troops by the end of each game, it's not that much of a stretch. |
| 116 | * 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, which culminates in defeating Adam Smasher, who is considered one of the setting's most powerful figures]]. |
| 117 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Crysis}}'' your suit makes you a one-man army thanks to its [[RegeneratingHealth regeneration]], [[SuperStrength superhuman strength]], [[SuperSpeed superhuman speed]], and [[InvisibilityCloak invisibility]] pairing very well with your character's Delta Force training. A slightly more realistic one than usual, because you can't carry more than four weapons and you do die with surprising ease if you fail to notice the grenade that has rolled near your feet or if an enemy scores a lucky headshot, but in the end you still manage to kill nearly seven hundred soldiers while destroying dozens of armored vehicles and helicopters all by yo'self. [[spoiler:And that's ''before'' the aliens step in.]] |
| 118 | ** You don't even have to use weapons to be a one man army. You can just use your GoodOldFisticuffs to kill literally hundreds of North Korean troops. [[spoiler:Theoretically, this also works on aliens, but their strong close combat capabilities make it really hard to do]]. |
| 119 | ** {{Lampshaded}}: Major Strickland says, at the start of level 3: "You're a one-man army, Nomad!" |
| 120 | ** Alcatraz/[[spoiler:Prophetraz]] from the second and third games is even more extreme. He's far tougher and stronger than Nomad from the first game, on top of carrying better weapons. Despite his enemies being more formidable than anything Nomad faced, he ends up with a far higher body count. |
| 121 | * ''Souls'' series: |
| 122 | ** The Slayer of Demons in ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'' [[OneRiotOneRanger single-handedly]] ends a demon infestation by slaughtering his way through an entire army of powerful demons and corrupted soldiers. |
| 123 | ** The Chosen Undead of ''Videogame/DarkSouls''. By the end of the game, they will have cut their way through armies of self-resurrecting zombies (most of whom [[EliteZombie used to be soldiers and knights]], and can still skillfully use their equipment), skeletons, invading dark spirits, several [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]], dragons, demons, divine knights [[spoiler: and the insane Lord of the Sun himself.]] |
| 124 | ** The Undead Hero in ''Videogame/DarkSoulsII'' is no slouch, either. By the end of the game, they will have defeated most of the above, along with Giants and [[spoiler:the Children of the Dark.]] |
| 125 | ** The Ashen One of ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsIII'' not only kills all of the above plus some new foes (the enemy count is denser than in previous games), but tops all who came before by defeating [[spoiler:the Soul of Cinder, the physical manifestation of everyone who linked the First Flame- including the Lord of Sunlight ''and'' the previous player characters.]] |
| 126 | *** There are several NPC examples in the ''Souls'' series as well, but none greater than Slave Knight Gael. By the end of ''the Ringed City'' you learn that he went through all the same obstacles as the Ashen One. He's also been fighting since [[TimeAbyss the gods of Lordran were still in their primes]], meaning his body count over the years ''must'' be ridiculous. |
| 127 | * In ''VideoGame/DeadRising'', the protagonist Frank West ends up killing thousands of zombies and a handful of psychopathic killers, despite [[BadassNormal having no combat training]]. It's a relatively downplayed example however, as the game makes it clear that the zombies and psychopaths are usually just equally untrained people who, in the zombies' case, don't have weapons (or minds). And they still give Frank a lot of trouble (he gets captured or injured fighting some of the armed psychopaths and [[spoiler:ends up being infected by the zombies and saved by Isabela]]). When the military clean-up battalion shows up, they quite easily kill all of the zombies and psychopaths (those Frank hadn't already killed, anyway) without a single noted loss on their end despite just being light infantry. Of course, Frank proceeds to [[TookALevelInBadass kill a fair number of the black ops soldiers too.]] |
| 128 | ** [[HandWave He's covered wars, you know.]] Though he also states he's never fired at a person. |
| 129 | ** The most noteworthy achievement in the game requires the player to kill 53,594 zombies... ''In six hours of gameplay.'' For those of you who don't know the significance of that number: It's the population of the Town he's in. |
| 130 | ** Three other notable achievements are "Legendary Soldier", "Hella Copter", and "Infinity Mode." Frank earns these by respectively: killing twenty [[DemonicSpiders special forces soldiers]], shooting down one of the special forces' UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, and defeating their [[FisticuffsBoss commander, Brock Mason]], in a fistfight on top of his tank before hijacking it to escape the infected town. |
| 131 | ** ''VideoGame/DeadRising2'' has Chuck Greene, who one-ups Frank by not only killing thousands ''more'' zombies (including the new [[EliteZombie gas zombies]]), but also [[https://deadrising.fandom.com/wiki/Dead_Rising_2_Psychopaths 20-30 armed psychopaths]] and 40-odd mercenaries. With a combination of [[BoringButPractical scavenged guns]], [[MixAndMatchWeapon combo weapons,]] and whatever ImprovisedWeapon he can find. |
| 132 | * Isaac Clarke of ''Franchise/DeadSpace'', a single engineer armed with six [[ImprovisedWeapon power tools]] (plus one real gun) who takes down dozens and dozens of the creatures that wiped out and [[TheVirus recruited]] an entire ship of over a thousand people, along with four separate gigantic monsters, one of which was [[ImplacableMan technically invincible]]. In fact, he not only fails to die, he performs ''way'' better than the [[RedShirtArmy actual soldiers]] who turn up later in the game! |
| 133 | * In ''VideoGame/DeadSpace2'', he does it while fighting the government and insanity, In VideoGame/DeadSpace3 he does it while fighting depression and an environment trying to kill him. |
| 134 | * ''VideoGame/DeadlyRoomsOfDeath'': This is one of the reasons Beethro came to be known as [[spoiler:1st Slayer. The other reason is that all other Slayers died, but he was the one that killed them.]] |
| 135 | * The eponymous ''VideoGame/DeathwishEnforcers''. Four [[CowboyCop Cowboy Cops]] against an entire crime syndicate (which, [[MagicRealism for some reason]], includes zombies and an amazon that shoots lightning). Seems like fair odds. |
| 136 | * Your character from ''[[VideoGame/DefJamSeries Def Jam: Fight For New York]]''. Think about it for a second: he so dominates the underground FightClubbing circuit that he takes over a bunch of the bad guy's fight club locations on his own. This continues until the bad guy suggests a winner take all match to settle everything. After you win that fight, the bad guy goes back on his word and takes most of those club locations back by force, but that's all right because you can kick his goons out of all those clubs and reclaim them. Then ''after all that'', when the BigBad declares that [[IHaveYourWife He Has Your Girlfriend]], you turn back around an retake all those clubs from the "good guy" gang by kicking their butts for the ManipulativeBastard BigBad. So, your character will singlehandedly destroy two [[TheSyndicate huge criminal gangs]] by himself, with his bare hands, in the course of maybe a couple of months. Oh, and for fun during his offtime, he can get into and win various independent tournaments and battle royals, too. |
| 137 | * Dante of ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry'' has probably accumulated a very impressive demon body count. Lack of clear details makes it difficult to say if he has outdone his father Sparda, who singlehandedly rebelled against TheLegionsOfHell and saved humanity (or so the backstory claims), or whether the fact that a demon as powerful as Sparda is his father [[JustifiedTrope justifies]] Dante's capabilities, which would make it [[InTheBlood in his blood.]] |
| 138 | * The main character of ''VideoGame/DevilsThird'' (currently only known as "Ivan") fights on his own against squadrons of enemy soldiers. Being a WalkingArmory, he's able to equip two firearms and a sword at any time to mow down enemies at any distance. |
| 139 | * Whoever you play as in ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'' or ''[[VideoGame/{{Diablo}} Diablo II]]''. In the first game, you venture into the depths of hell killing every demon, critter, and monster in your path including Diablo himself. In the second game, not only do you plow through Hell and kill Diablo, you also kill his brothers Mephisto, Baal, and legions upon legions of their evil minions, all by yourself. It's a virtual one man demonic genocide. |
| 140 | ** And in ''VideoGame/DiabloIII''? You and your companion get to [[spoiler:save both Sanctuary and the High Heavens from Belial, Azmodan, and eventually Diablo himself]] -- and then, in ''Reaper of Souls'', you go on to [[spoiler:save humanity itself from the most powerful angel in existence]]! |
| 141 | * ''VideoGame/Disgaea3AbsenceOfJustice'' has Princess Sapphire Rhodonite, who effectively serves as her kingdom's ''entire military force.'' |
| 142 | ** In a cutscene in ''VideoGame/DisgaeaHourOfDarkness'', Laharl personally takes on the EDF invasion fleet, numbered in the millions, and wins. In play, he's not too shabby at this either; since his stats go up every time he kills an enemy, if he gets multiple kills in quick succession he can swiftly become virtually invulnerable. |
| 143 | ** From a gameplay standpoint, it's practical to create one of these, due to level differences not factoring into EXP calculations. There's also an ability bearing the trope's very name, which doubles the unit's stats when they're the last one available. |
| 144 | * Corvo Attano in ''VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}'' was a MemeticBadass even before he was granted power by the Outsider. Guards will warn their new comrades that they have seen Corvo defeat entire squads by himself during training sessions, describing him as a "whirlwind". |
| 145 | %%* [[DeconstructedTrope Deconstructed]] in ''VideoGame/DonPachi''. |
| 146 | * ''Franchise/{{Doom}}'': |
| 147 | ** The eponymous Doomguy very quickly becomes this in the original ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}''. After the initial invasion, he then proceeds to slaughter hundreds of thousands of hellspawn, so much so that he's literally too ''tough'' for Hell to contain, to the point where they all but tell him to ''get the Hell out''. After returning to Earth, he proceeds to kill even more demons (in part to avenge his pet bunny Daisy). |
| 148 | ** ''VideoGame/DoomII'' takes this further, with the Doomguy out-and-out ''destroying'' Hell on his second rampage (Granted, via the [[LoadBearingBoss death throes]] of the FinalBoss). |
| 149 | ** ''VideoGame/Doom64'': The manual reveals that the events of the previous games did in fact leave Doomguy with severe PTSD. Nonetheless, when Hell rears its ugly face again, he's unhesitatingly back in the fray to single-handedly put down another demonic invasion, and the game ends with him deciding to stay in Hell forever to ensure that no demon will ever threaten humanity again [[spoiler:(though ''VideoGame/DoomEternal'' reveals that doing so ended up taking a further toll on his sanity)]]. |
| 150 | ** ''VideoGame/Doom3'': The rebooted version of the character downplays the "killing machine" angle, in favor of making him a more straightforward BadassNormal ''a la'', say, [[Franchise/{{Alien}} Ellen Ripley]]; however, he can still kick just as much ass as the previous iterations, spraying lead all across a demon-infested Mars to literally Hell and back, without [[TheStoic showing a single emotion]]. In the ExpansionPack you play a different character... who doesn't even blink when the entire rest of his squad gets annihilated by a demonic artifact that he then proceeds to carry around for the rest of the game without skipping a beat... |
| 151 | ** In ''VideoGame/Doom2016'', the original Doomguy returns (now [[RedBaron named by the forces of Hell]] to be "[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast The Doom Slayer]]") and is established as having spent untold '''eons''' gruesomely [[DemonSlaying carving his way through the legions of Hell]] with such ferocity ([[TouchedByVorlons blessed as he was]] with [[LightningBruiser terrifying power and speed]] [[DivineIntervention by the support of the Seraphim]]) that [[TheLegionsOfHell the literal Legions of The Damned]] [[HorrifyingTheHorror became pants-shittingly]] [[TheDreaded terrified of him]], and had to resort to [[ColonyDrop dropping a gigantic temple on him]] and sealing him away in a cursed sarcophagus just to stop his rampage, as the Slayer had proven himself capable of triumphing against even elder demons the size of a '''mountain''' ''single-handedly''. And at the beginning of the game proper, [[EstablishingCharacterMoment he smashes in a zombie's head literally within ten seconds]] [[SealedBadassInACan of waking up from being sealed in a crypt]], and goes straight back to bringing bloody vengeance on the demons. Tellingly, [[MookDebutCutscene the first time you encounter an imp]], the reason they screech before attacking isn't out of rage or bloodlust, but [[OhCrap sheer panic]]; animation work that accompanies the game's [[FinishingMove Glory Kills]] (wherein the Doom Slayer finishes off weakened demons by literally ripping them to pieces with his bare hands) makes it clear that every demon killed in this way spends their final moments [[MookHorrorShow wide-eyed with sheer terror]]. |
| 152 | ** ''Videogame/DoomEternal'' continues the trend and embraces it wholeheartedly; though Hell has been able to smash through all of Earth's high-tech armies with barely a dent to their own numbers, the Doom Slayer is more than capable of stopping their invasion all by himself, to the point where he single-handedly reduces the demonic consumption of Earth by more than a third within the game's ''first ten minutes''. This does ''not'' go unnoticed by humanity, with the broadcasts and recordings of [[LaResistance the ARC]] and [[LesCollaborateurs the UAC]] making it clear that the Doom Slayer has a well-established reputation as a [[PersonOfMassDestruction one-man extinction event]]; the PA system of the UAC base on Phobos even tells everyone to evacuate the moment the Slayer gets his hands on the {{BFG}}. By the end of the game, the Slayer even adds [[spoiler:an ''[[AngelicAbomination alien]] [[LightIsNotGood god]]'' and the reality-warping [[EldritchAbomination Icon]] [[AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever of]] [[FinalBoss Sin]]]] to his kill count. |
| 153 | * Protagonists of ''Franchise/DragonAge'' games tend to fall under this trope. |
| 154 | ** In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' the Grey Warden and his/her allies can accrue a very impressive kill count by the end of the game. Since the Grey Warden is required to be in the party for most of it, chances are good that he or she will rack up the lion's share of the kills. It's even lampshaded in one sidequest after you help beleaguered guardsmen kill an entire band of mercenaries and their leader notes that only an idiot would willingly attack you. One poor dwarf who tries to attack you at one point even says that you fight like an Archdemon. One Templar commander mentions that the Warden was very thorough cleaning up the Mage Tower of abominations (to be clear, the codex say that abominations are hard to kill and take months, maybe years, to eliminate ''one'' and that when they're confronted by warriors ''trained'' in killing them). There is an achievement for killing 1000 darkspawn over multiple playthroughs, but it is entirely possible to earn it in ''one'' playthrough. That does not cover everything else you kill. By the end of the game you and your small band of companions will have killed ''legions'' of enemies. |
| 155 | ** Lampshaded by one mook, upon learning your identity. "Oh, no... I've heard of ''you''!" |
| 156 | ** In [[VideoGame/DragonAgeOriginsAwakening the expansion pack]], you can intimidate some people into getting out of your way by informing that that "legions have fallen in my wake, you are just a number." |
| 157 | ** And then there's the simpleminded dwarf lad Sandal, who is good at enchantment. Near the end of the game, while you're StormingTheCastle, you come across him standing in the middle of about two dozen dead darkspawn. What does he say when you ask him what happened? [[VerbalTic "Enchantment!"]] And in the second game, he does it again twice, first with another bunch of darkspawn, including an Ogre ''frozen in place''. When asked about the Ogre, he says "'''NOT''' Enchantment!". The second time, it was a bunch of demons, including a Pride Demon (the most dangerous kind of demon). |
| 158 | ** Every Grey Warden is chosen specifically because they are badass. A member of the Legion of the Dead will recognized you inmediately as a Grey Warden because you are in the Deep Roads with just an small bunch of people following you. In the Dalish Elf origin, you find Duncan by following the trail of darkspawn corpses left in his wake. |
| 159 | ** In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'', when most city-states have a problem, they send an army. When Kirkwall has a problem, they send ''Hawke''. |
| 160 | *** Lampshaded by Varric in the case of fellow party member Anders, whom Varric claims has killed about 500 men, 250 women, and some huge number of giant spiders. And he's the party's resident ''[[CombatMedic healer]]''. |
| 161 | *** Lampshaded by Zevran, who had hard time understanding why people ''insist'' in trying to kill both Hawke and The Warden, after several failed attempts. |
| 162 | ** In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', the Inquisitor is this trope because they are literally the only person in the entire world capable of doing what they do - namely, sealing up cracks in the fabric of reality which allow demons to enter the world. Along the way they mow down hundreds of demons, renegade Templars, rogue mages, bandits, bears, wolves, darkspawn, giants, and dragons. |
| 163 | * Artix in ''VideoGame/DragonFable''. In a war with 100 million undead, he killed 50 million alone and felt he was ripped off when the thousands of other heroes killed the other 50 million. |
| 164 | * ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'': |
| 165 | ** Possibly first played straightest in the original ''VideoGame/DragonQuestI''. An entire nation's military force is overrun by enemy mooks, and one man, with no weapon or armor, no equipment of any kind, and no magic (well, at least he starts that way) steps up and singlehandedly slaughters thousands of monsters and the BigBad himself. |
| 166 | ** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII'': Erdrick himself can do the same thing if the player chooses to without getting party memebrs from Patty's Party Planning Place. An enemy by [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin that very name]] is the strongest Skeleton Swordsman in the game, being found in [[spoiler: [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Zoma's Citadel, aka the future place of the Dragonlord]]]]. |
| 167 | ** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV'': Ragnar [=McRyan=] is probably a literal example, considering how incompetent the rest of Burland's military appears to be. To further this, once the party actually sets out to take on the Marquis de Leon, they find Ragnar already doing it by himself. |
| 168 | ** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIX'': The Wight Knight -an undead horseman- defeated Stornway's entire military. The Apprentice can get to that point as well, if you utilize the Reclass system and certain equipment. They can become powerful enough to take on the Big Bad of the game by themself. |
| 169 | ** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestHeroesTheWorldTreesWoeAndTheBlightBelow'' and ''VideoGame/DragonQuestHeroesIITwinKingsAndTheProphecysEnd'': Like most ''Warriors'' games, any playable character can become this. Downplayed this time, however. It's usually a party of four fighting and they need to make good use of Player Mooks to succeed. Any player in high tension mode is an invincible god of destruction, with infinite HP, infinite MP, status effects don't work, and heightened attack. Too bad it's temporary. |
| 170 | * Taken to ridiculous extremes in ''VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}''. How ridiculous you may ask?... Well, in around the 10% of the game, Verse XIX "Last War [[AbridgedSeries between the Union of Flippedfrance vs the Empire of Notspain]]", around the first third of the mission Caim has the enemy countdown at 1576... yeah. And this is not the biggest bloodbath in the game and you had probably killed more enemies if you unite the XVIII other chapters. There is a reason why the game is also known as ''Caim Kills the [[Fanfic/ThirtyHs FUCK OUT of Everybody]]: the Game''. |
| 171 | ** Caim due to his [[UnstoppableRage endless rage]], wants to [[OmnicidalManiac kill every single Imperial soldier in the world.]] And he can; getting a dragon at the beginning really just quickens the rate at which he kills everyone, he didn't actually ''need'' it for that purpose. In certain levels the death toll is in the thousands. Yes, there is a counter dedicated for kills. |
| 172 | ** Meanwhile, ''Drakengard 2'' flips the script and makes this bottomless well of vengeful, murderous rage and hatred your ''enemy''. Good luck with that. |
| 173 | ** [[{{Videogame/Drakengard3}} Zero]] did it [[{{Prequel}} before Caim did]]. Now with actual dialogue! |
| 174 | * The Doomguy from ''VideoGame/{{DRL}}'', even on easiest difficulty, can end up with several hundred kills. And then you can do through the ultra-grind of Archangel of 666 (compared to standard game's 24 levels, this challenge is almost ''28 times'' longer) and get a 100% killrate, for a total bodycount of [[http://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php/topic,7607.0.html 56565]], including ''152 Cyberdemons''. |
| 175 | * ''VideoGame/DungeonCrawl'''s monsters might not go up that far in quality, but they certainly don't lack quantity: [[http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Stabwound/morgue-Stabwound-20080309-224221.txt 266922 creatures vanquished.]] Also note that this game keeps detailed statistics on how many individuals of each creature type you have killed. |
| 176 | * ''VideoGame/DustAnElysianTail'': It's hardly surprising that the protagonist Dust qualifies, being that this is an action-RPG, but there's a story point about it too: [[spoiler: The ones who set him up as their champion [[InvokedTrope specifically infused him with the skill and power of an assassin called Cassius, because they needed someone who could fight an army alone]], and Cassius had been so capable.]] |
| 177 | * Legendary Champions in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'', and generally anyone that's hit Legendary in at least one combat skill. They tend to have godlike statistics, move like thunderbolts, and can hit goblins so hard ''they crash into trees and [[LudicrousGibs disintegrate in a spectacular spray of limbs]]'' if they're armed with blunt weaponry, or simply dicing them apart in seconds, riddling them full of holes and [[OffWithHisHead popping heads off left and right]] if armed with something sharp. Legendary champion marksdwarves were in many ways even scarier, because DF crossbows in the hands of sufficiently experienced troops tended to function like a fusion of sniper rifle and heavy machine gun; now, they're not quite as deadly, but a good enough marksman should cut down an entire squad before they ever reach the fortifications. In the hands of a player, even a full-on wrestler can be one of these as an adventurer, caving in skulls with bare fists, kicking limbs hard enough to turn them into red paste and reducing opponents to mangled heaps of snapped limbs and screeching pain in a few seconds once they land so much as a finger on them; the AI (un)fortunately isn't smart enough to capitalize on this. |
| 178 | ** Incidentally, the history of the randomized worlds will sometimes cause entire armies to start fights with solitary "historical figures". [[ConservationOfNinjutsu The odds are disturbingly stacked against the army]]. After the overhaul to Worldgen fighting, this can still happen, but ''only'' if there is a good strategist involved. If you get outwitted, not even your champions survive, but even ten complete scrubs can take down fifty trolls and thirty heavily-armed goblins if the scrub leading them is a good enough strategist. And if they're skilled ''and'' well-directed, you can do like [[Series/GameOfThrones Ramsay Bolton]] and cripple entire, heavily fortified armies with nothing but twenty good men. |
| 179 | ** This is taken to the extreme with [[http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=34933.0 Morul]], who is currently legendary in 68 out of 73 skills. Even crossbow-wielding orcs are no match for him. |
| 180 | ** Tholtig Cryptbrain is probably the best example of this. Died of old age with 2,341 kills to her name. Mostly elves (and one cyclops). Drove back armies of hundreds of elves by herself towards the end of her life. |
| 181 | ** Mention must also go to Tarn Adams for being a One Man Army of Developers. Seriously, ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' has far more content than almost any two or three games you can think of put together, and ''one guy made the whole damn thing.'' |
| 182 | * KOEI's ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriors''/''VideoGame/SamuraiWarriors'' games have the entire game based around butchering your average soldiers as well as enemy officers. This doesn't seem to be much of an achievement, however, as it seems a majority of soldiers in Ancient China were trained to stand there and stare dumbly at their opponents {{Justified|Trope}}, since certain characters ([[BoisterousBruiser Zhang Fei]], Lu Bu, among others) are so legendary that ''entire armies'' will balk or flee at the sight of them. |
| 183 | ** Zhang Fei's claim to fame was defending a bridge by himself against Cao Cao and a thousand or more of his troops. Cao Cao was worried of an ambush on the other side, but still. |
| 184 | *** Zhuge Liang one-ups him in the novel by defeating Sima Yi literally by himself, armed only with a fan and a teapot and accompanied by only an unarmed servant boy. Basically, Sima Yi of Wei is approaching with a huge and formidable army. Zhuge knows his own forces are tired and cannot beat this force, so he orders them all to retreat. He then sets up in a city which he has earlier cleared of people, sitting above the wide-open city gate calmly drinking tea and fanning himself. The Wei army soon arrives, and Sima Yi can scarcely believe his eyes--an unarmed Zhuge Liang right there for his taking?! Having previously suffered multiple times from Zhuge's perfidy, Sima [[ParanoiaGambit thinks it's just another trap]] and orders a general retreat. |
| 185 | ** Considering that the way they trained the lower level soldiers at the time was to pick a random farmer, put a spear into his hand, and say, "Have fun". The trained officers exploits may not have been exaggerated much either. |
| 186 | ** ''VideoGame/SengokuBasara'' is a worse offender. In Koei's series, at least your allies do something good when they're not in front of you (some of the time, anyway). In here, they practically do nothing but stand there like an idiot, and you REALLY have to be a one-man army to survive. But with all the flashy moves available, it's not a problem. |
| 187 | ** Its sister series ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriorsGundam'' is the same premise, [[JustForFun/RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!!!]] It even has a skill called "One Man Army" that powers you up tremendously against grunts. |
| 188 | ** ''VideoGame/OnePiecePirateWarriors'' likewise takes characters from the manga and turns them into full-fledged One-Man Armies (Or if they already were, allows their status as One-Man Armies to shine). |
| 189 | ** With ''VideoGame/HyruleWarriors'', classic ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' characters like Link, Zelda, and Midna get the same treatment. This even includes characters such as [[LittleMissBadass Agitha]] or (with DLC) Tingle. Thankfully, though, [[AvertedTrope the rest of your army isn't useless]], and will capture keeps and defeat enemy officers when you're not standing over them. This is important as keeps play a much larger role in this game than in other Koei titles. |
| 190 | ** Similar to the above, ''VideoGame/FireEmblemWarriors'' brings various One-man Armies and RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething from five games and make them shine even more (Like Corrin, Ryoma, Xander, Marth, Chrom, and Robin) and even turns characters with support roles at best into powerhouses in their own right (Lissa, Sakura, and Elise). |
| 191 | [[/folder]] |
| 192 | |
| 193 | [[folder:E-F]] |
| 194 | * The main character in the ''VideoGame/EarthDefenseForce'' series (often called Storm 1) fits this to a tee. Destroying massive armies of giant ants, spiders, robots with only two weapons and rolling out of the way. Later in the game, they destroy nests, the Ant queen, the Spider king and the ravagers' mothership on foot. And, in some game, you are the only one sent to the battlefield. |
| 195 | * The nameless pilot protagonist of ''VideoGame/{{Einhander}}'' is explicitly described as being feared in the opening cutscene, and if his backstory exploits even approach those made while beating the game, why he has that reputation is aptly demonstrated. |
| 196 | * ''VideoGame/EldenRing'': Since the game is about three times as long as prior ''Soulsborne'' installments, has an open world where nearly every enemy respawns, and features generally much tougher foes in greater density, the Tarnished will easily outdo his predecessors in the Slayer of Demons, Chosen Undead, Bearer of the Curse, Good Hunter, and Ashen One. A quintuple digit body count by the end of an exhaustive playthrough is perfectly possible. To wit, there are 238 ''bosses'' alone in the game. The level design plays up the one-man army element more than in the ''Soulsborne'' games as well, since the various armies of the land are still cohesive enough to maintain fortifications and bases, resulting in many StormingTheCastle moments where the Tarnished knocks on the front gate and ploughs through everything inside. The bosses are also stronger than they've ever been (a [[MiniBoss Crucible Knight]] is more than a match for almost any boss in ''Soulsborne'', to say nothing of the dozen or so PhysicalGod bosses), and almost none of them [[WorfHadTheFlu are nerfed]] from their primes. |
| 197 | ** Many bosses have come out on top of armies in their lore, but Starscourge Radahn is the only one to put that into action in his boss fight. You challenge him with the unique ability to summon as many NPC cooperators as needed (their summon signs being scattered around the boss arena), and you will most probably need as many summons as you can reach, because Radahn is insanely aggressive and deals heavy damage. The summons will probably die quickly, but that's fine because they can be re-summoned at will and they take Radahn's attention off you for a bit. |
| 198 | * ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' |
| 199 | ** 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|Trope}} 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]]. |
| 200 | ** The PlayerCharacter in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'' more or less walks through gates to hell and destroy legions of demonic beings, all on his own. To put this on perspective: Every time the player encounters soldiers or knights entering said gates, they are either traumatized, dead, or TooDumbToLive, causing them to get killed anyways. In addition, the player also easily loots abandoned fortresses and ancient ruins with ease, both of which are usually occupied by large amounts of bandits, dark mages, or undead. |
| 201 | ** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'': |
| 202 | *** [[PlayerCharacter The Dovahkiin]] can wander the countryside alone or with a single companion/packmule/arrowcatcher and clean out fortresses, bandit camps, ruins and crypts of anything remotely hostile. Your follower may be a valuable supporter early on, but eventually they'll just slow you down (and possibly get in the way of your shots). To give you an example, for most people, slaying a dragon is the achievement of a lifetime. For the Dovahkiin, it's not even a chore. Dragons can show up at random times when you're on your way to complete quests, so it's possible to go kill multiple dragons in the space of a single day, while on your way to do more important things. There is even a quest during the Civil War that allows you to take on the enemy alone, intentionally invoking this trope. |
| 203 | *** In the backstory, during the Dragon War, [[BigBad Alduin]]'s presence (and eventual absence) alone was enough to decide the battle between the dragons and the human/dragon alliance. When he returns, he is able to destroy the entire garrison at Helgen and raze much of the town to the ground by himself, without taking a scratch, despite the presence of elite Imperial soldiers and [[MagicKnight battlemages]]. In terms of lore, he's easily able to destroy the entire world when the appropriate time comes along (although he prefers to rule it instead). |
| 204 | ** From the backstory, the Snow Prince, the greatest warrior of the Falmer (Snow Elves) who lived on Solsteim during the during the war against Ysgramor and his 500 companions. During the Battle of Moesring, the final battle between the Snow Elves and the Atmorans under Ysgramor, he pretty much carried the Snow Elves through the battle, [[HeroKiller cutting through the legendary Atmorans like a a scythe through grass]]. And then a mourning 12-year-old Atmoran squire threw her slain mother's sword at him. [[ThrowingYourSwordAlwaysWorks Sure enough, it hit the intended mark perfectly]], and the great warrior prince of the elves fell dead in the snow. After the remaining Atmorans carried the day, instead of burning his body along with the other slain elves as per their custom, [[WorthyOpponent they constructed a vast tomb for him and buried him with honour, even posting some of their warriors to guard it from robbers]]. |
| 205 | ** Also from the backstory, Pelinal Whitestrake, the [[LongDeadBadass legendary 1st Era hero]] of mankind/[[FantasticRacism racist]] [[TheBerserker berserker]]. Believed to have been a [[EternalHero Shezarrine]], [[GodInHumanForm physical incarnations]] of the spirit of the [[GodIsDead "dead" creator god]] Lorkhan (known to the Imperials as "[[IHaveManyNames Shezarr]]"), Pelinal came to [[FounderOfTheKingdom St. Alessia]] to serve as her [[PhysicalGod divine champion]] in the war against the [[AbusivePrecursors Ayleids]]. Pelinal would fly into fits of UnstoppableRage (''mostly'' directed at the Ayleids) during which he [[BloodSplatteredWarrior would be stained with their blood]] and [[PaintTheTownRed left so much carnage in his wake]] that Kyne, one of the [[OurGodsAreDifferent Divines]], would have to [[CueTheRain send in her rain]] to cleanse Ayleid forts and village before they could be used by Alessia's forces. At one point, he went on such an [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge extreme round]] of one-man slaughter that he very nearly caused the Divines to ''abandon the world in disgust'', before Alessia was able to regain their favor through prayer and sacrifice. When Alessia and her armies were too struck with fear to attack the [[TheTower White-Gold Tower]] occupied by the Ayleid leader Umaril, Pelinal charged in himself and defeated (though could not kill) Umaril before he himself was slain. |
| 206 | ** The [[AncientOrderOfProtectors Blades]] typically qualify. Blades training is among [[TrainingFromHell the most intense]] of any group in Tamriel, and their [[KatanasAreJustBetter weapons]] and armor are not too shabby either. Individual or small groups of Blades have done everything from turn the tide of larger battles to slay ''dragons''. In the 4th Era, even the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Thalmor]] are cautious when hunting down surviving Blades, preferring to take them out using [[TheresNoKillLikeOverKill overwhelming force]] wherever possible. |
| 207 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Elite}}'', in order to reach the ultimate Elite ranking, you have to kill over ''6,000'' ships. This does take around 20 in-game years if you want to be able to make enough money to keep your ship repaired, armed, fueled and with a working drive. |
| 208 | * This happens a lot in ''VideoGame/EVEOnline''. Various missions involve destroying wave after wave of ships. Depending on the level of the mission this can vary from dozens of frigates to dozens of battleships. It is implied in the lore that aforementioned battleships have several thousand crew members, so one mission could have a kill count in crew members that runs into the multi-millions fairly quickly. It's also worth knowing that EVE players are Capsuleers, they use capsule technology which seriously reduces the need for crew numbers. NPC's don't have the advantages that come with capsules. |
| 209 | * Not actually 'men', but the player character monsters in ''VideoGame/{{Evolve}}'' fit this. A single monster is capable of overwhelming the entire military force of a planet, including their scores of Mooks, robot drones, armor support, gunships, and more. According to WordOfGod, this specific scenario has actually happened several times prior to the events of the game. |
| 210 | * ''VideoGame/ExitFate'' sees you on the receiving end of this, in the battle against the Demon Commandos. The enemy forces consist of only two... persons... but each are considered a thousand-strength unit, in terms of power. And that's not accounting for their jacked-up stats besides that. Even if you successfully defeat them, the story establishes that all you accomplished was to distract them for long enough to make a retreat. |
| 211 | * The Hero of ''VideoGame/{{Fable}}'' usually ends up killing hundreds of people and monsters through the course of the game. Since they rapidly respawn and the player can continue the game after the ending credits, the Hero can literally have an INFINITE kill count. Not only that, but every type of being he has killed, and how many, are listed on his character sheet. |
| 212 | * Every ''Franchise/{{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). |
| 213 | ** The Lone Wanderer of ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' can become quite the killing machine, capable of wiping out hundreds of raiders, mercenaries, and [[spoiler:government soldiers]] with little more than a beat-up hunting rifle. This is especially intriguing given the character was raised for nineteen years in a totally sterile, controlled environment. Of course, your dad did give you a gun at age ten, and the game does have you [[LevelGrinding learning from experience]]. In fact you are required to assault the VeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon of ''Broken Steel'' and wipe put dozens of power-armored soldiers singlehandedly (unless you have a partner such as [[GameBreaker Fawkes]]). The only consolation is your EleventhHourSuperpower in the form of the [[{{BFG}} Tesla Cannon]]. |
| 214 | ** Of course, the Vault Dweller and Chosen One of ''1'' and ''2'' respectively can do much the same thing and one was also raised in a sterile controlled environment. The Vault Dweller is by far the most restrained example of the ''Fallout'' player characters though, both because combat is actually surprisingly difficult and dangerous for the first half of the game and because ''Fallout 1'' is by far the shortest installment with the least amount of enemies available to kill. Though in practice, that usually means the Vault Dweller will have a human/mutant kill count of around 100, rather than around 1,000 like the others. |
| 215 | ** [[EliteMooks Enclave troopers]] in ''2''. Their ArmorOfInvincibility, {{BFG}}s, and sky-high [[StrongAndSkilled combat skills]] means a single one of them is capable of wiping out an entire town or raider base with no trouble. Against ''you'', this means that most of your BadassCrew (including the GeniusBruiser Super Mutant and the ''sapient Deathclaw'') tend to be reduced to goo within a couple of turns when fighting one. [[ThisIsGonnaSuck You usually fight them in squads of seven to nine.]] |
| 216 | ** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'': |
| 217 | *** Tthere are three in-game challenges that net you a few extra experience points and a small bonus to damage. "Lord Death," "Lord Death of Murder Mountain" and "Apocalypse Ain't Got Nothing On Me." The first requires 200 kills. The second requires 700 more kills (for a total of 900 kills). The third requires another 1,000 kills (for a total of 1,900 kills). They seem appropriately named. From a bare story perspective, the Courier canonically tips the balance of an entire war single-handedly |
| 218 | *** There are also non-PC examples. There's [[ColdSniper Craig Boone]], who's a MemeticBadass both in and out of the game and [[BloodKnight Legate Lanius]], a man who personifies RankScalesWithAsskicking. There's also, in the second DLC, Joshua Graham, who mounts a one-man genocidal campaign against a [[AlwaysChaoticEvil murderous tribe that slaughtered his hometown]] and, if you don't talk him down, will ''win''. This is ''after'' he killed the best assassins [[BigBad Caesar's Legion]] could send after him, and killed every Legion scout he found as a bonus. The third DLC reveals that Elijah (the BigBad of the first DLC, and no pushover when confronted there) was this too, cutting through dozens of armed combat robots sent after him by the Think-Tank and escaping Big Mountain by hijacking a train and using it as a battering ram. |
| 219 | *** The Enclave remnants, five RetiredBadass former EliteMooks of the same type in ''2''. In one ending, they wipe out hundreds of Caesar's Legion troopers without taking a single loss in return. |
| 220 | ** The Sole Survivor of ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' might qualify by single-handedly wiping out the Gunner army at Quincy, the perpetrators of the infamous [[CurbStompBattle "Quincy Massacre"]]. They ''certainly'' qualify if they resolve the ''Nuka World'' story through the "Open Season" quest: [[spoiler:You may remember the awesome moment that was wiping out the slaver den of Paradise Falls back in ''3''? Well, "Open Season" is that cranked up one hundred times. Three ruthless raider gangs, each large, well-armed and organized enough to conquer the Commonwealth themselves, have taken control of what was once a peaceful trading post at the park and enslaved and murdered the traders there. To free the traders, you have to kill the raiders. '''[[GoodIsNotSoft And every last one of the evil bastards has to go]]'''.]] |
| 221 | * Every ''Far Cry'' protagonist: |
| 222 | ** Whichever mercenary you pick to play as in ''VideoGame/FarCry2'' will be this, as you're required to slaughter your way through two feuding armies in a fictional {{Bulungi}}. The enemies are a lot dumber and more fragile than in the other ''Far Cry'' games, too, and have no EliteMook variants. |
| 223 | ** Jason Brody in ''VideoGame/FarCry3''. Even with all the health upgrades and body armor, he's still extremely vulnerable, so he achieves victory through trickery, deception, and tactics. It works, with him killing off literally hundreds of pirates and privateers. Deconstructed because [[spoiler: his ability to inflict death drives him closer to insanity.]] |
| 224 | ** Ajay Ghale of ''VideoGame/FarCry4'' manages to top Jason by single-handedly bringing an end to a civil war in a full-fledged country -- at the start of the game, the Golden Path was pushed to the verge of annihilation, with their war effort amounting to a single town and a handful of underground fighters. His sheer badassery gets lampshaded several times during the game, as soldiers and civilians talk about how he's got to be a complete psychopath to massacre entire bases all by himself. This YouBastard is undercut by a civilian pointing out that the "psychopath" does more in the space of a few weeks than the entire Golden Path has done in twenty years. |
| 225 | ** The Deputy of ''VideoGame/FarCry5'' probably kills [[ArtifactMook the entire population of Eden's Gate]] twice over. |
| 226 | * In the ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series: |
| 227 | ** A major subplot in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' involves the three heroes and [[GuestStarPartyMember Leila]] searching for several {{Plot Coupon}}s. Just as you're about to seize the reward at the end, you meet Ricard Highwind, who did all of the stuff your party did ''all by himself''. |
| 228 | ** Terra of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' is introduced in the opening segment as a one-woman army who "Fried 50 of [the Empire's] {{Magitek}}-armored soldiers in three minutes". |
| 229 | ** Pretty much any SOLDIER 1st Class from the world of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' counts. For example, in ''VideoGame/CrisisCore'', one of Zack's first missions is essentially summed up as "Storm the enemy base alone. [[StormingTheCastle Have fun]]." By the end of the game, it literally takes the strength of the entire Shinra standing army to take Zack down. |
| 230 | ** The Adventurer, the PlayerCharacter from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI''. They eventually become a powerful fighter capable of not only fighting many dragons, gods and eldritch abominations by themselves, they even [[spoiler: become a God]] in order to prevent the Cloud of Darkness from destroying the world. While the worst threats in-game are often fought with party members or with Trust Magic (allowing a player to effectively solo a fight while only relying on 5 summoned [=NPCs=] instead of other players), a level-capped player could fight most monsters and bosses up to those featured in the last few expansions completely by themselves. |
| 231 | ** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'': |
| 232 | *** Lightning. It's even {{Lampshaded}} ingame: her exclusive skill is aptly named "Army of One". Taken to extreme levels when you consider that she wiped out several battalions of Cocoon's finest soldiers, the Cavalry, without any visible effort immediately after effortlessly dealing with an entire security fleet. Hell, even as a mere human she managed to wipe out an entire train of soldiers, becoming a [[TouchedByVorlons l'Cie]] was [[TookALevelInBadass just another level in badass to her]]. And in ''Final Fantasy XIII-2'' she is not only stated to have transcended beyond the level of a l'Cie, she also commands an army of Eidolons and feral beasts, regularly defies the laws of physics, shatters entire buildings with single spells, slams enemies through entire buildings, is immune to time manipulation, and channels her magic to use as bullets... The trope is taken to its ultimate point in ''Lightning Returns'' in which she becomes the single most powerful protagonist that Square Enix have ever produced, capping off the game by killing/sealing [[spoiler: the god of light, Bhunivelze]]. |
| 233 | *** Snow also counts, considering he curbstomps an entire army battalion midway into the first game. And in the third game he even manages to go toe-to-toe with Lightning. |
| 234 | ** The Warrior of Light, the PlayerCharacter from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''. Starting out as a lowly adventurer in one of the main city-states, they soon prove that they can turn the tide of battles, then wars, and not even gods can stand against them. Canonically, the Warrior of Light does most of the fighting in the dungeons/raids of the game ''alone'', or with very small numbers of fellow adventurers or helpers. There's an achievement for killing 100,000 enemies, which rewards players with the aptly-named "Butcher's Crown". |
| 235 | ** Thunder God Cid Orlandeau in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics''. His class, Holy Swordsman is essentially three classes' worth of attacks rolled into one (three very good classes, at that), he can easily exploit enemy weaknesses regardless of situation and has the stats to back it up. If you put even the slightest effort into leveling him up, he can solo most maps. |
| 236 | ** ''VideoGame/DissidiaFinalFantasy'': |
| 237 | *** The backstory of [[BigBad Chaos]] is that he was supposed to be Onracians' answer to another country's one-man army, Omega. Then he was driven insane by power and devastated the world, or something. By the time the game starts, it takes several ''more'' Armies of One from other worlds to take him down. |
| 238 | *** Special mention among said Armies of One goes to the [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyI Warrior of Light]]. Meta-wise, he becomes an Army of One by being a CompositeCharacter and due to the... interplay between ''Dissidia'' and ''Final Fantasy I'' it is implied that now FFI was cleared by a single character. In story, he faces more non-{{Mooks}} than any other character, alone, in the ending to 012 fights ''an entire army'' on his own until he can no longer stand, and in the AlternateUniverse of Scenario 000 is stated to be the last one who fell to [[TrueFinalBoss Feral Chaos]]. |
| 239 | * Speaking of ''VideoGame/FinalFight'', this is a commonality amongst most BeatEmUp games. See also ''VideoGame/StreetsOfRage'', ''VideoGame/DoubleDragon'', ''VideoGame/RiverCityRansom'', etc. |
| 240 | * ''Franchise/FireEmblem'': |
| 241 | ** As a general rule of thumb, at first you're generally on par with the imperial scrubs. Near the end of the game, though, you'll probably have "that one guy" (or even better, multiple), who you can just throw into a pile of red guys, and laugh at they waltz up and basically get obliterated. It's almost tragic. In fact, for some this is a SelfImposedChallenge, to play through an entire game using only one character. |
| 242 | ** The original ''Fire Emblem'' One-Man Army is Camus, introduced in ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemShadowDragonAndTheBladeOfLight Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light]]''. In the original game, he is one of the only enemies who can give GameBreaker Marth pause, he is a very powerful player unit in ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemGaiden Gaiden]]'', ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem Mystery of the Emblem]]'', ''New Mystery'', and ''Echoes: Shadows of Valentia'', but his crowning achievement has to be the fourth chapter of ''BS Fire Emblem: Archanean Chronicles''. With nothing but the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Gradivus]], three guys, and [[WhiteMage Nyna]], he fights off about 70 Dohlrian cavalrymen and Aurelian bandits. It gets to the point where if he takes out SkippableBoss Bulzark before Nyna escapes, [[BigBad Medeus]] has to ''personally'' come down there to kick his ass, and admits that he is the most powerful warrior on the continent since Anri himself. |
| 243 | ** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemPathOfRadiance Path of Radiance]]'' and its sequel ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn Radiant Dawn]]'' have the BlackKnight. Tibarn mentions that he wiped out an entire unit of super-powerful bird-people on his own. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in his case, however, as his armor makes him invulnerable to anything but weapons blessed by the Goddess -- and at this point, only two weapons in the entire world have the appropriate blessing, and [[OhCrap he's using one of them]] (Ike [[InfinityPlusOneSword possesses the other for most of the game]], but doesn't use it until the final confrontation). [[ForegoneConclusion Since the Bird Tribe lacked the appropriate blessing required to hurt him...]] Of course, even without his blessed armor, the Black Knight has by far the highest combined stats of any character in the game, with max Hit Points, Strength, Skill, and Speed, and nearly the highest possible speed and resistance. ''Radiant Dawn'' also reveals that he's [[spoiler:the greatest tactical mind in Begnion, and a major military commander in ''two'' countries]]. |
| 244 | ** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' has Walhart TheConqueror, the man who rules the continent of Valm as TheEmperor and forged his empire through fire, blood and steel, much of which he spilled personally. A memorable scene where the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Regna Ferox]] khans Basilio and Flavia are leading their troops against the Valmese in a pitched BattleInTheRain has them noticing a significant breach in their lines suddenly forming, with the former wondering if it's some sort of elite Valmese cavalry division. They quickly realize to their shock ''it's just Walhart'' doing the deed and now he's charging right at them. |
| 245 | ** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'' has anyone who wields a Heroes' Relic and its [[RoyaltySuperpower corresponding Crest]], said to be equal to a ''thousand'' normal soldiers. Take for example Dimitri, who combines SuperStrength and BloodKnight tendencies even before the second act begins. [[spoiler:At that point, on non-Crimson Flower routes he suffers a severe TraumaCongaLine that includes betrayal, being framed for his uncle's murder, and the (presumed) death of his loyal retainer, hits his tipping point, and is forced into exile for five years.]] During this timeskip, he repeatedly ventures into enemy territory to slaughter entire Imperial battalions by himself. Unfortunately for him, this gets {{deconstructed}} on the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes in that he's still just one man who can suffer from exhaustion when fighting too many foes or opponents of similar caliber to himself, [[spoiler:especially when he's too mentally compromised to recognize the need or ''[[DeathSeeker want]]'' to retreat]]. The aftermath of the Battle of Gronder Field on those routes sees him [[spoiler:suffering an UndignifiedDeath unable to defend himself or [[UncertainDoom going missing]] presumed dead, with the Kingdom of Faerghus knocked out of the war as a result.]] |
| 246 | ** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemWarriors Warriors]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemWarriorsThreeHopes Three Hopes]]'' take this up to eleven. In the sense that '''EVERY''' playable character is this. Considering they are games in the style of ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriors'', it doesn't necessarily come to a surprise though. ''Three Hopes'' also has a couple of storyline examples in the two {{Brutal Bonus Level}}s: |
| 247 | *** In "Cycles of Nostalgia", [[spoiler:Arval, in their previous life as Epimenides, beats back an entire Adrestian/Church army led personally by Saints Cethleann, Cichol, and Seiros]] more or less single-handedly. |
| 248 | *** In "Eagles, Lions, and Deer", Shez accidentally stumbles upon the annual mock battle between the three houses and proceeds to wipe out all three groups all by their lonesome. |
| 249 | * ''VideoGame/FireWarrior'' (of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' fame) played this trope to terrifying limits. Not only does La'Kais kill several battalions of the Imperial Guard, large numbers of Space Marines and several Dreadnaughts, a good deal of Chaos Marines and several Daemons including a God by himself - he does it all within the timespan of twenty four hours. This is even more amazing when one considers that La'Kais is a Tau Fire Warrior, making him the Tau equivalent of basic infantry, a common foot soldier. Furthermore, not just any day--La'Kais' ''first day'' of live combat action. It's worth noting that canonically, he was driven insane by his experiences and was never fit for duty again. |
| 250 | ** At least, up until around the Eye of Terror world campaign, at which point they brought him back (for the Tabletop Game) as O'Kais (Shas'o being the equivalent of "general", while shas'la is roughly "private". Yeah, Tau nomenclature includes lots of compounds, and an individual's rank and caste), and used him as the justification for [[CanonImmigrant introducing man-portable railguns as a sniper-rifle analogue]]. They still note that he was a basket case, but he gets roped back in for a completely undefined 'emergency'. |
| 251 | ** The novel offers a few justifications, the primary one being that [[spoiler:Khorne was helping]]; also most of his kills were from blowing up a ship's engine (flushing hundreds out into space). He's still pretty messed up. |
| 252 | * ''VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon'': |
| 253 | ** In the first game, the [[PlayerCharacter Point Man]] kills nearly a thousand genetically modified enemy supersoldiers in less than 24 hours. This feat is made much more impressive by the fact that all of these soldiers are being psychically controlled by one man, so that if one sees you, all the rest know where you are too. Additionally, some of the soldiers wear so much armor that it takes nearly 8 shot gun rounds to the head to kill them; other soldiers are in extremely durable mech-suits. Even the basic infantry can take take three 12-inch steel spikes through the head without flinching. The only thing that hero really has going for him is that he has super-reflexes, or from the player's point of view, the ability to [[BulletTime slow down time]], due to [[spoiler:the fact that his mother, Alma, has psychic/super-natural powers]]... The first game also nicely averts the "No one finds this unusual" aspect of this trope with a post-credits phone dialog revealing that the incident [[spoiler:was being monitored as an impromptu field test for two experiments: The army of supersoldiers and the player character. Guess which party passed with flying colors?]] |
| 254 | ** Even more so in the sequel, ''Project Origin''. The main character is a soldier in Delta Force, a faction that was getting slaughtered in the first game. Yet in the first mission (with no BulletTime) he kills thirty trained corporate soldiers in as many minutes, gets surgery done to give him slow-mo abilities, and then proceeds to not only kill as many clone Replica soldiers as the Point Man in the first game did (about 500) in the same amount of time, but also to defeat a 500-strong corporate army that could invade a moderately-sized country. Theoretically, he should also have been able to destroy Alma, but [[spoiler:this was sabotaged by CorruptCorporateExecutive Genevieve Aristide]]. The quote from the leader of said corporate army pretty much sums it up. |
| 255 | * Galen Marek from ''VideoGame/TheForceUnleashed'' is trained for years by Darth Vader to hunt and kill surviving Jedi while leaving no witnesses, and boy does he deliver. By the end of the game, his kill list includes two Jedi (plus two who "merely" soundly defeated, and possibly the phantoms of three more (and it should be reiterated that each Jedi is a one-man army in his/her own right)), hundreds of soldiers, stormtroopers, aliens, and assorted scum, several [=AT-STs=], [[spoiler:a ''friggin' Star Destroyer''--plus several more, indirectly--]]and (in the bad ending) [[spoiler:Vader himself - even in the good ending, he soundly defeats Vader and has him at his mercy.]] |
| 256 | [[/folder]] |
| 257 | |
| 258 | [[folder:G-K]] |
| 259 | * Another idolized PlayerCharacter is Tact Mayers from the ''VideoGame/GalaxyAngel'' gameverse, who, although helped by another fleet, did most of the work defeating Eonia and breaking up the Val-Fasq conspiracy. There is a twist, however--he's a ''commander'' and his victories come from the battle plans he gives the Angels, which is a bit more realistic. |
| 260 | * ''VideoGame/{{Geneforge}}'' heavily features minion magic and summoning. The Agent and Servile classes can both become capable of surviving without them. |
| 261 | ** This is the point of the titular Geneforge. In the first game it takes your nearly endgame protagonist and, if you use it, gives you ludicrously improved abilities. Your shaper no longer needs to shape; you can take up glaring enemies to death. In later games you're Geneforged in the very beginning because both sides of the war need super-soldiers and aren't picky about how they get them. |
| 262 | * Some missions in the ''VideoGame/GhostRecon'' series have the protagonist go solo, such as [[StormingTheCastle infiltrating Chapultepec Castle]] in ''VideoGame/GhostReconAdvancedWarfighter''. |
| 263 | * In ''VideoGame/TheGodfather: The Game'', you can expect to run up at least 250-300 kills taking over Little Italy for the Corleones. If you have less than 1000 kills by the time you become Don by toppling the other four families, [[MemeticMutation you're doing it wrong]]. In the sequel, you have assistance from a BadassCrew of {{Personal Mook}}s but nothing's stopping you from keeping them all in reserve and going to town on NYC, Florida and Cuba by yourself. Even with their assistance you're still taking on several times your number regularly and winning. |
| 264 | * The power of the ''VideoGame/GodHand'' allows its wielder to pimp-slap the entire legions of Hell all by his lonesome. |
| 265 | * Kratos from ''VideoGame/GodOfWar'', but, you know, he's a god. [[spoiler:At least after the first game and his [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu Punching Out of Ares]].]] Which then gets drained from his body in the second game. Of course, he then goes from One Man Army to One Man ''Apocalypse''. By ''God of War III'' it's been stated that if anything was left alive, it's because Kratos hasn't killed it yet. |
| 266 | ** Fatherhood and time hasn't slowed him down in ''VideoGame/GodOfWarPS4''. Whether it's draugr, trolls, ancients, seidr, or even a dragon, he'll tag team it with his son, Atreus. The only opponent that gives him a challenge in the game is the Stranger who shows up at his door, being damn near immortal! [[spoiler: That Stranger is Baldur, and by the end of the game, he's also dead not by Kratos' pure might, but by ChekhovsGun, and Kratos was willing to let him leave with his life! He only killed him because he wouldn't leave Freya alone, even if she would have Baldur kill her.]] |
| 267 | * Basically, each protagonist of the ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' series is the closest thing one could call an unstoppable killing machine that destroys everything in its path, perfectly capable of annihilating an entire criminal organization if they set their mind to it. Occasionally lampshaded by some characters: |
| 268 | -->'''Ken Rosenberg''' in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'': Oh yeah, he's a real one man army! Real fuckin' dependable. |
| 269 | -->'''Gay Tony''' in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoTheBalladOfGayTony'': Okay, [[PlayableCharacter Lou]]. Shit. You'll be fine. Shit. No one in this whole crazy town is crazy enough to take you down. |
| 270 | * ''VideoGame/GuiltyGear'''s background material indicates that Potemkin, resident MightyGlacier, is estimated to have such incredible physical strength and stamina that he is as dangerous as an ''entire armored division.'' Considering his OneHitKill attack involves him punching someone ''once'' without his [[PowerLimiter strength inhibitors]], that seems justified. |
| 271 | ** And in one of the Drama [=CDs=], resident [[GeniusBruiser Genius]] LightningBruiser Sol Badguy carved through an army of [[OurDemonsAreDifferent Gears]] singlehandedly. Being the SuperPrototype Gear probably helped. |
| 272 | * ''VideoGame/HalfLife'': |
| 273 | ** In ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'', Gordon Freeman starts off as an unassuming [[BadassBookworm theoretical physicist]] whose job basically amounts to [[AlmightyJanitor manual labor]]. But one resonance cascade and crowbar pickup later, Gordon is a virtually unstoppable badass who fends off not only an entire invasion of incredibly lethal aliens, but also whole platoons of crack soldiers. When he returns in ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' he finds that he has become a [[ShroudedInMyth legendary figure]] whose mere presence is enough to precipitate a worldwide revolt. (No doubt his nigh-unique "hazard suit" helped, but it amounts to a bit of a {{handwave}}.) This was also lampshaded in ''Half-Life 2'' in Dr. Breen's message to the Combine forces: |
| 274 | --->'''Dr. Breen:''' How could one man have slipped through your force's fingers time and time again? How is it possible? This is not some agent provocateur or highly trained assassin we are discussing. Gordon Freeman is a [[BadassBookworm theoretical physicist]] who had [[InformedAbility hardly earned the distinction of his Ph.D.]] at the time of the [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt Black Mesa Incident]]. I have good reason to believe that in the intervening years, he was in [[HumanPopsicle a state that precluded further development of covert skills]]. The man you have consistently failed to slow, let alone capture, is by all standards simply that -- [[RightManInTheWrongPlace an ordinary man]]. How can you have failed to apprehend him? Well... I will leave the upbraiding for another time, to the extent it proves necessary. Now is the moment to redeem yourselves. |
| 275 | ** ''WebVideo/FreemansMind'' mentions several times Freeman's increasing body count and the ramifications thereof. "Man, if I get indicted once I leave here this is getting harder and harder to explain. I don't think anyone's gonna buy a few dozen counts of self-defense with a submachine gun." By Episode 31 he [[{{Pun}} changed his mind]] again to a more [[Literature/FearAndLoathingInLasVegas Raoul Duke]]-like attitude: who would believe the prosecutor if told that he, Gordon Freeman, an untrained scientist, survived monsters, killed hundreds of marines and launched a missile? And by Episode 51 he's tired of the whole damn thing; "People aspire to be a one-man army cause it sounds badass, not because you literally want to function as an entire army; it's do everything yourself or ''die''." |
| 276 | ** Adrian Shepherd from ''Opposing Force'' sort of qualifies. He leads a squad of fellow HECU marines a few times, but for the most part fights on his own. |
| 277 | ** ''Half-Life 2'' actually gives you the achievement "One Man Army" once you take down 6 gunships. |
| 278 | * ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'': |
| 279 | ** Though ''all'' of the [[SuperSoldier Spartans]] are referred to by the ScaryDogmaticAliens of The Covenant as "[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Demons]]", the Master Chief is a standout even among his fellow [[BioAugmentation bio-augmented]] and PowerArmor-wearing comrades, with only [[VideoGame/HaloReach Noble Six]] possibly equaling him in deadliness. Many ''individual'' missions in these games has you killing over a hundred enemies (granted, most of them are [[TheGoomba Grunts]]), and Master Chief is the protagonist of ''six'' of said games, each with over a dozen missions. By the end of the second trilogy his personal kill count is well into the thousands. |
| 280 | ** In fact, the plot of ''Videogame/Halo2'' is that the Chief kicked the Covenant's ass so hard that he broke their society. |
| 281 | ** The Arbiter in ''Halo 2'' and ''Halo 3'' is [[BackToBackBadasses pretty much on par with Master Chief when both are active]], racking up a ridiculous body count. |
| 282 | ** The lack of the Chief's psychological damage is justified as he's been training for this since he was six, with the UNSC taking particular care to make sure that he and the other [=Spartan-IIs=] would be able to remain mentally stable no matter what. Note that in the expanded universe, the [=Spartan-IIIs=] are created with less attention to their psychological well-being, due to being conceived as ''disposable'' SuperSoldiers; Lucy-B091 remained DumbStruck for 7+ years after a suicide mission which killed all but two people of her 300-strong company. |
| 283 | ** ''Anime/HaloLegends'' introduced to us one of the earliest known Arbiters, who manages to carve through an entire Covenant Army with naught but Energy Swords and sheer TranquilFury. |
| 284 | ** And ''ComicBook/TheHaloGraphicNovel'' gave us Sergeant Johnson slaughtering through Flood after Flood all on his own... although it's justified since [[spoiler: he's actually a Spartan-I and therefore somehow immune to the Flood virus ([[ContinuitySnarl Maybe]])]]. But the point still stands. |
| 285 | ** The Rookie in ''VideoGame/Halo3ODST'' is a particularly impressive example. Unlike Master Chief and the Spartans, he does ''not'' need bio-augmentations, power-armor, or decades of harsh training to wipe out hundreds of enemy troops including dozens of Brutes and several tanks and aircraft. He's simply a skilled paratrooper with a submachine gun and whatever other weapons he can scrounge. [[BadassNormal That's enough.]] |
| 286 | ** The [[UpdatedReRelease Master Chief Collection]] has an achievement for killing over 100 enemies. In ''any'' of the games, you will have earned that achievement before completing the first mission.[[note]]Excluding cutscene-only "levels" that open up some of the games.[[/note]] The name of the achievement? "Just Getting Started." |
| 287 | * Nariko of ''VideoGame/HeavenlySword'' becomes a One Woman Army, especially toward the end when she's singlehandedly taking down literal scores of King Bohan's men in a truly epic [[TheWarSequence War Sequence]] before the final showdown. |
| 288 | * ''VideoGame/HeavyWeapon: Atomic Tank'': The titular Atomic Tank has enough weaponry to take out a small nation, as evidenced when it goes against a ZergRush of [[DirtyCommunists Red Star forces]] and crushes them all. It helps that the tank can carry nukes that OneHitKill all regular enemies. |
| 289 | * The PlayerCharacter of the third ''VideoGame/HeroOfTheKingdom'' installment is explicitly described this way by other characters. It helps that he seems to be something of TheChosenOne, having been granted unexplained psychic visions which help him figure out what's happening to the kingdom. |
| 290 | * In ''VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic IV'', one of the many gameplay changes from the three first ones was that your heroes could walk around on the map without an army. The skill system was revised, and made your heroes able to actually fight on the battlefield instead of their earlier, supporting role. The result of this? Any level 20 hero with Grandmaster Combat, Melee and Magic Resistance combined with Expert skills in Life Magic could defeat small armies without the help of creatures. Ten levels and some additional skills (Archery, another Magic skill or more Life Magic) later, they wipe out entire endgame armies single-handedly. |
| 291 | ** In the first campaign, the description before the last battle with the BigBad has Lord Lysander go into battle against about 10,000 skeletons and the evil hero. The story is told from the viewpoint of his squire, who is wounded by an ambush and is unable to aid his lord. The squire sees in amazement as Lysander takes out [[spoiler:the Gryphonheart Sword, something that only one of Gryphonheart bloodline can do]] and personally slaughter all the skeletons, destroying [[spoiler:the false Gryphonheart Sword]] and capturing the BigBad. |
| 292 | * ''Franchise/{{Hitman}}'': Usually, Agent 47 can slip in and out of areas completely unnoticed and kill his targets in a way that makes it look like an accident. However, he has zero qualms about slaughtering everything in his path if the situation calls for it and when he is pissed off (such as the case with ''VideoGame/Hitman2SilentAssassin'' or ''VideoGame/HitmanAbsolution'') every person in the area can kiss their ass goodbye. |
| 293 | * The girls of ''VideoGame/HoloCure'' can and will sweep through hordes of BrainwashedAndCrazy fans and run the range of jobs like TheGrimReaper (Mori Calliope), an IdolSinger (Tokino Sora), or the [[GodOfChaos Warden of Chaos]] (Hakos Baelz), for example. |
| 294 | * Chin of ''VideoGame/HongKong97'' is apparently a "killer machine" fit to be tasked with wiping out the ''entirety of China'' (at the time of the game's release, that would be 1.2 billion people!) |
| 295 | * ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami'' is a double subversion, like with ''Uncharted''. You're a OneHitPointWonder like every last mook, which makes your ability to scythe through them by the dozen all the more impressive. An achievement requires you to kill 1,989 enemies, and even a conservative count that takes your many, many deaths into account still leaves you with a few hundred bodies. Canonically, the protagonist kills so many mobsters [[spoiler:that he becomes partially responsible for the fall of the Russian Mafia]]. |
| 296 | * ''VideoGame/HouseOfAshes'' in the chapter titled ''The Assault'' when Rachal takes control of a M1919 to cover the retreat of her surviving allies when a massive horde of vampire-like aliens attacks them. The only reason she gives up the gun is not because she ran out of ammo, or was forced to to avoid being overwhelmed, but because she ran out of things to kill! |
| 297 | * Deconstructed in ''VideoGame/{{Iji}}''. If you decide to kill everything in sight like is expected in other games, you end up fighting off [[spoiler:TWO CONSECUTIVE ALIEN INVASIONS]] IN ONE DAY. You actually get awarded the rank "One Woman Army" if you rack up 300 kills by the end of the game. The alien's chat logs grow noticeably more afraid, and there is a YouBastard moment if you go this route. On the other hand, it is also possible to go through teh game without killing a single enemy, which leads to a somewhat happier ending. The game doesn't ignore the psychological impact that the war has on poor Iji. She isn't a soldier, she'd never killed before the start of the game, and she's reluctant to start fighting in the opening cutscene. During gameplay, she apologizes to the first few aliens she kills, then grows silent as she gets numb to it, then when her kill count gets high enough, she starts screaming "Die!" at her enemies, in a voice that sounds like she's coming unhinged. |
| 298 | * ''VideoGame/ImmortalDefense'' had your ascended character slaughter thousand of ships and everyone on board in the [[spoiler:eons long]] defense of your [[spoiler:dead]] homeworld. |
| 299 | * Cole [=McGrath=] from ''VideoGame/{{inFAMOUS}}''. In the first game, he takes on a city full of super powered criminals with nothing but himself and wins. Then [[VideoGame/{{inFAMOUS 2}} the second game]] roles around and he basically gets ''much'' stronger. How strong was he before? ''He could call down lightning storms '''at will'''.'' |
| 300 | * ''VideoGame/JakAndDaxter'': Jak. Let's see, {{BFG}}? Check. SuperpoweredEvilSide? Check. The blessings and occasional help of the {{Precursors}} themselves? Check. Countless FacelessGoons and AlwaysChaoticEvil monsters who just don't know when to quit and inevitably die in amazingly high numbers? Ay-yup. That's Jak. |
| 301 | * Rico of the ''Videogame/JustCause'' series is about as close to a literal example as you can get, since he routinely waltzes into military compounds and casually slaughters dozens of solders in between [[MadeOfExplodium blowing up various important structures]], until he gets bored and steals a passenger plane so he can crash it into a police squad. Not for the sake of a mission, either; the game ''encourages'' you to wander around randomly blowing things up and mowing down the countless mooks that try to stop you. |
| 302 | -->'''[[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/ClassicalMythologyFirstGenerationOlympians Zeus]] and a [[EthnicMenialLabor hispanic window cleaner]] |
| 303 | * Pit in ''VideoGame/KidIcarusUprising''. 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. |
| 304 | * ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' has a good number of them. |
| 305 | ** In a [[TheWarSequence particularly memorable sequence]] of the second game, Sora [[KidHero a 15 year old boy]] fights off a literal thousand [[TheHeartless Heartless]] at once. It takes maybe 5-10 minutes, tops. Go ahead and calculate the kill-per-second rate if you want... |
| 306 | *** In fact, those enemies are actually fairly easy to defeat, so it is claimed. The original trailers made Sora come across as even more badass, with threateningly [[GiantMook large]] Heartless amongst the enemies. Perhaps the thought of it was too much badass for Disney. Sora does, in fact, gain a kill count of at least two or three that over his entire "career". |
| 307 | *** The actual problem was the severe amount of slowdown caused by having thousands of heartless and then hundreds of Giant heartless on screen at once. This issue was solved during ''[[TheWarSequence The 1000 Heartless Battle]]'' by only allowing the Heartless right up close to you, usually no more than several dozen, to move, and leaves the rest to be rendered as stationary 2D sprites (even beyond the invisible barrier) until Sora gets close to them or there are very few left. |
| 308 | ** Bonus points go to the fact that, in the upper right-hand corner, you get a kill counter. |
| 309 | ** Also in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'', Sora is able to use his friends as components when he goes into a drive. He becomes this when he goes into Master and Final forms. |
| 310 | ** All the Organization XIII members and the Keyblade Masters and also some major Keyblade Wielders fall in this category. Axel of Organization XIII takes out a huge army of seemingly endless greater nobodies in a single attack, while Sora, in spite of all his badassery, failed to hold his own against the army. |
| 311 | * Literally in ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'': the level 12 quest has the player tasked with starting a war, and then finishing it. Each side has exactly 1000 soldiers, and they'll never go anywhere if you don't personally slay them. In fact, you are perfectly free to wipe out one army, and then turn around and wipe out the ''other'' army as well, all by your lonesome. [[spoiler:Getting both sides down to one soldier and then taking a specific action earns you the best reward for the war.]] That said, by completing certain sidequests, you bring other members of your side into the war, killing more soldiers with each successful combat for each completed sidequest. |
| 312 | * In ''Videogame/KingdomsOfAmalurReckoning'', entire bandit gangs, cults, and squads of Tuatha soldiers fall to the Fateless One. The Fateless One occasionally has some assistance but still does most of the work. Of course, the Fateless One isn't just a badass, he/she is a Badass who can wield the fabric of Fate itself as a weapon. The "House of Valor" questline pits the Fateless One against increasingly ridiculous and unfair odds, with the audience expressing amazement every time he/she wins. |
| 313 | * As of ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters XIII'', "The One-Man Army" is the ''official'' nickname of HotBlooded super-soldier [[VideoGame/IkariWarriors Ralf Jones]]. |
| 314 | * Franchise/{{Kirby}}. Same as Mario but instead of having blood on his shoes, he simply ate millions of people. Respect must be given to the [[BadassAdorable cute, pink fluff ball]] that regularly thrashes {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in ''[[VideoGame/KirbySuperStar Revenge of Meta Knight]], where as you go through the game taking out every enemy and destroying entire sections of the ship you see the conversations between Meta Knight and his men, with them starting off mildly annoyed you get on board, surprised at the damage you do, then finally deciding to fight you honorably before going down as Meta Knight himself says nothing but "...Thank You" to his crewmates. As if they were a [[TearJerker small fleet being taken down by an actual army with no way out.]] |
| 315 | ** Going off of that, Meta Knight also deserves mention. Some of the games' {{Arrange Mode}}s feature Meta Knight singlehandedly mowing down enemies as he [[{{Speedrun}} dashes through levels as quickly as possible]][[note]]He can summon help if he wants, but that's completely optional[[/note]]. It's especially noteworthy in ''[[VideoGame/KirbySuperStar Meta Knightmare Ultra]]'', where after the aforementioned speedrunning, Meta Knight summons Nova specifically to wish for a fight against the [[WorldsBestWarrior greatest warrior in the galaxy]]. And he ''[[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu wins]]''. |
| 316 | * The protagonists of the two ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' games have a decent go at this -- the Jedi Exile, [[VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords in the second game]], massacres her (canonically, the player can choose the character's gender) way through an enormous battleship (with a little help from the boss Mandalorian and the battleship's owner's (reformed?) Sith apprentice) before ''single-handedly'' carving through the entire population of a Sith academy, whereas the PlayerCharacter in the first storms through much of a ''giant Sith-powered army factory'' to confront the BigBad. |
| 317 | ** Darth Malak rather {{Lampshade|Hanging}}s this. He tells to send all his troops to confront the PC, not because they'd be able to stop him/her (of course they can't), but in order to give him time to prepare his defenses. |
| 318 | [[/folder]] |
| 319 | |
| 320 | [[folder:L-O]] |
| 321 | * Guy Kazama in ''VideoGame/LastAlert''. One of the higher ranks he can achieve is even called "Oneman Army". |
| 322 | * Joel and Ellie in ''Videogame/TheLastOfUs'' may not rack up the kind of insane body counts that [[Videogame/{{Uncharted}} Nathan Drake]] has, but they still manage to kill an impressive amount of foes, especially considering that the game they're in tends to be quite a bit more realistic than most others. |
| 323 | * Felgorn in ''VideoGame/LastScenario'' goes up against the entire Republic army ''and wins.'' [[spoiler:Unfortunately, he bleeds out from his wounds.]] |
| 324 | * ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'': |
| 325 | ** Link hacks up monsters with his sword, shoots them with arrows, blows them up with bombs, tramples them with his horse, kills them in many inventive ways with magic, and in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', uses [[EpicFlail an iron ball and chain]] to massacre them four at a time. In the last dungeon you go through 20 at a time, not to mention cavalry, and in the Hidden Village you have to snipe an entire town of Bublins. In his various incarnations, Link must have killed at least ''fifteen armies'' of {{Mook}}s, ''plus their [[BigBad lead]][[OneWingedAngel ers]]''. In the handheld versions ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleGames'', you receive a ring for killing 1000 monsters. |
| 326 | ** Link takes this trope literally in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword''. After spending the whole game kicking asses, [[spoiler: he fights entire armies of bokoblins, on his own, before defeating BigBad Ghirahim in a duel to save Zelda.]] And he did it in a row. |
| 327 | * ''VideoGame/LikeADragon'': |
| 328 | ** Kazuma Kiryu 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''. |
| 329 | ** 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. |
| 330 | ** 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]]. |
| 331 | * ''VideoGame/MadnessProjectNexus2'' turns every playable character into a One Man Army. Eventually, this includes your own custom character, who will go from 'bumbling oaf' to 'blood-soaked murder machine' in the course of a playthrough. You will be expected to butcher more than a hundred enemies per level, and will often do so effortlessly. |
| 332 | * Jack, from ''VideoGame/MadWorld'', is able to kill hundreds (maybe thousands) of people [[spoiler:including bosses that have better weapons, some that are monstrously enormous, a giant robot and even some that can regenerate]] using only the environment, his strength and a freaking CHAINSAW on his arm. It's later justified as [[spoiler:Jack is actually the former Grand Champion of Deathwatch.]] |
| 333 | * In ''VideoGame/MakaiKingdom'', the titles for the second to highest tier infantry units is "One man army" and "One woman army" respectively. (The highest is "Lethal Weapon".) Since you cannot have more than eight units on the map at any given time, and since some areas (dungeons) require you to go through up to a hundred maps before you can return home and rest/resurrect/save, having a team of unstoppable and untouchable battle monkeys is essential if you want to go forth and bust a cap. |
| 334 | * ''VideoGame/{{Manafinder}}'': Once Lambda obtains the blessing of the gods at Heavensreach, she'll automatically be boosted to level 70. She's also required to clear the final dungeon by herself, and is more than capable of doing so with her stats. |
| 335 | * The ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' series is another example, and perhaps one of the first games to try to justify this trope. The character goes from being listed as just another security officer, [[spoiler:to being a military super cyborg, to being the hero with a thousand faces, until the game decides the only possible justification is you being the physical embodiment of destiny]]. |
| 336 | ** It also drastically escalates between games. In the first game, the Security Officer is definitely a tough nut to crack, but is mostly limited to surgical strikes. In the second game, his arrival is considered a turning point in the war against the Pfhor on Lh'owon, and he basically does most of the heavy work on his own. The rampage he goes on in the third game, however, makes both of the prior games look like an opening act in comparison. Seriously, ''Infinity'' can basically be called ''[[ImplacableMan Security Officer]] VS [[MookHorrorShow Everyone Else.]]'' |
| 337 | ** [[TheChessmaster Dur]][[AiIsACrapshoot an]][[MissionControl dal]] himself. The Pfhor sent the best fleet (14 ships, 10% of the active navy) commanded by their best admiral. He destroyed half of them with a single stolen Corvette before going down, and then finishes the job when he hijacks the flagship. |
| 338 | * Commander Shepard & co. in ''Franchise/MassEffect'' ends up accumulating a kill count well into the ''thousands'' against foes that would all be SuperSoldier quality by our standards (and most of which are considered elite even in-universe, especially the geth and Cerberus). One of the dialogue options before the final battle against Saren is: |
| 339 | --> '''Saren:''' I was afraid you wouldn't make it in time, Shepard. |
| 340 | --> '''Shepard:''' I had to wipe out a few hundred of your followers. |
| 341 | ** [[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 number 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. |
| 342 | *** 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 and/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.]] |
| 343 | ** Just about any powerful biotic qualifies (take Jack, for instance, who immediately after being brought out of cold storage proceeds to tear a space station apart with her brain). |
| 344 | ** Garrus is another noteworthy one - he spent a long time killing hundreds of mercenaries all by himself. Granted, he had a severe advantage in terms of environment, but still, it was something he specifically engineered to be that way. |
| 345 | ** Grunt. In the SuicideMission at the end of ''2'', Grunt can hold the rearguard ''all by himself''. |
| 346 | ** Legion is introduced carving [[MindHive their]] way through an entire derelict Reaper loaded with husks. It's not until the end of that mission when they gets swarmed under, and even then it's because they had other things to deal with. |
| 347 | ** [[MutuallyExclusivePartyMembers Kaidan Alenko/Ashley Williams]] proved themselves to be one at about the halfway point of the third game. [[spoiler:When Shepard had to fight through a Cerberus army to reach the Council, they had two other people with them. Kaidan/Ashley fought through the exact same army with no backup.]] |
| 348 | ** 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: |
| 349 | ---> '''Jedore:''' There are three of them! Three! Anything can be killed if you do your job! |
| 350 | ** Shepard was this by him/herself in the War Hero background where s/he held off an entire platoon by him/herself until reinforcements arrived thus saving the colony that s/he was defending. |
| 351 | ** [[SerialEscalation Taken to a greater degree]] in the Arrival [[DownloadableContent DLC]], where s/he annihilates an entire base of indoctrinated Alliance infantry, engineers, [[CurbStompBattle elite soldiers, and heavy mechs]], without ANY squad members backing him/her up. |
| 352 | ---> '''Project Guard:''' Shepard is tearing us apart! |
| 353 | ** In ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', despite being ''[[BrainwashedAndCrazy heavily indoctrinated]]'', the Cerberus forces encountered on Mars still manage to suffer a MassOhCrap at realizing just who the Alliance has sent to take them down. |
| 354 | ---> '''Cerberus Trooper''': Holy shit! It's ''[[TheDreaded Shepard!]]'' |
| 355 | ** The ''Normandy'' SR-2 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 flagship of the Citadel Fleet in the first game, provides 70. |
| 356 | ** Similarly, squad mates from ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' and some of the ones from ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'' can be added to the War Assets pool. Potentially, adding squadmates to the war assets pool can net you an additional two to three hundred points, which can exceed the value of the entire ground force components supplied by some ''species''. Only the krogan, all of the Alliance ground units you can recruit, and possibly the entire geth corps can supply more effective combat strength than ''ten'' of your squad mates. |
| 357 | ** Even more badass than Shepard's squad mates are the [[CoOpMultiplayer N7 Special Ops]]. A single promotion is worth a whopping 75 points of military strength, and while the entire class category's level is reset when you do this, the fact that you don't gain more points the more characters you have in that category effectively implies that those 75 points are from one person -- [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration and this assertion is backed up by the game mechanics]]. So one operative is worth more than the Destiny Ascension ''by themselves'' -- and this isn't even getting into how multiplayer is the way most players build up their Galactic Readiness. (a statistic that can double your effective military strength if maxed out) |
| 358 | ** Every asari commando is a one-woman army. They are considered to be the deadliest fighters in the entire galaxy (with the exception of [[WorldsBestWarrior Shepard]]), and even the codex says that going up against one alone is practically suicide. This is perfectly summed up by the War Assets entry for the Serrice Guard, a unit of asari commandos. After a space battle with a Blood Pack ship, they and the Blood Pack were forced to crash land on a planet. [[CurbStompBattle Over the course of nine days, the Blood Pack suffered over a hundred casualties from traps, ambushes, and night assaults.]] When the Blood Pack gave up and finally surrendered, they found out that they had only been fighting ''FIVE'' asari commandos. |
| 359 | *** And then there are krogan battlemasters. On two occasions, we hear about battles between an asari commando and a krogan battlemaster. One of these battles ended with both dead; the other ended in a draw... and the space station they were on ''destroyed utterly''. |
| 360 | *** In the Citadel DLC, the Armax Arsenal Arena tested its scoring system by sending in full squads of krogan battlemasters, and when none of them reached a score above 9999, they decided a fifth digit wasn't really necessary. It's quite likely that at some point you will exceed that score, earning you a lot of kudos from the staff and [[InfinityPlusOneSword the best armour in the game]] as a reward. |
| 361 | ** 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''. |
| 362 | *** And Sovereign isn't even the largest Reaper. That would be the Harbinger. Sovereign is the Reaper equivalent of an advanced scout. |
| 363 | ** ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'' keeps the theme going with Pathfinder Ryder, who can easily rack up a kill score in the thousands by the mid-game, thanks to a combination of weapons skills, biotic powers, and the ability to switch between them at will. At least four missions in the game have Ryder storming a heavily fortified enemy position, killing everything in their path, while the person in charge wonders why their goons are incapable of stopping them. |
| 364 | ** Ryder also has a squad mate counting as a One Krogan Army of his own, Nakmor Drack, an elderly krogan who's been, seen and shot all manner of things in his life. |
| 365 | * This is basically the entire premise of ''VideoGame/TheMatrixPathOfNeo''. Neo against all the security, Agents, whatever, with hardly any help. Especially, evident in the courtyard, church and the 'Congress' Smith fights. |
| 366 | ** Also Chang Tzu, a martial artist who while still trapped is capable of pulling of rebel-type BulletTime moves. LampshadedTrope: |
| 367 | --->'''SWAT member:''' ''[As Neo approaches and the team is standing in front of Tzu's door]'' A whole team for one guy ? Either this guy is really good, or they must be nuts to send all of us. |
| 368 | * Deconstructed in the ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'' series. While Max kills hundreds of criminals in the course of three enraged nights, it causes him severe psychological damage. He also only narrowly avoids going to prison. On the other hand: ''"[[VideoGame/MaxPayne1 What do you mean, 'he's unstoppable?!']]"'' By ''VideoGame/MaxPayne3'', he's become OneRiotOneRanger. |
| 369 | * Many ''VideoGame/MechWarrior'' games pit you, a single pilot, against hordes of opponents, sometimes greatly outnumbering and outweighing your own 'Mech, and expect you to win... and you do. Sometimes you can bring help, but not always, and even then [[ArtificialStupidity allied AI tends to be a bit thick]]. For instance, one HoldTheLine mission in ''2:Mercenaries'' is played solo, and expects you to fight off six extremely powerful Clan [=OmniMechs=] by yourself while ensuring that none slip past you to attack the retreating allies behind you. |
| 370 | * The classic ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonor'' games often had the PlayerCharacter, a lone OSS agent, fighting their way through hordes of Nazis singlehandedly. In the first game alone, you destroy a giant rail gun, sink a prototype U-boat, infiltrate a fort on the German border and kill Hitler's favourite colonel and then blow up his mustard gas production facility. In the sequel, ''Underground'', a [[ActionGirl badass French chick]] gets under the skin of the Third Reich so thoroughly that in the final level they lure her into an ambush with what seems like an ''entire platoon'' plus a trio of tanks, ''just to eliminate her'' (and of course, she kills all the Germans and wrecks the tanks anyway). ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'', this series' SpiritualSuccessor, made a point to avert this trope (you have a slew of AI squadmates and follow orders like a real soldier) because people criticized ''Medal of Honour'' as idealized and unrealistic -- wars are won by squads of joes, not lone heroes. |
| 371 | * The original ''VideoGame/MegaMan'' was upgraded from a humble assistant into a one man army to fight against all of Wily's robots. |
| 372 | ** ''VideoGame/MegaManX'' has fought multiple robot wars all by himself. Zero and Axl eventually join him as partners, but they're all one man armies themselves. After Zero and Axl are sealed/disappear, he's a one man army again for so long that he eventually gets sick of it and retires. |
| 373 | *** Which paves the way for Zero to be a one man army in [[VideoGame/MegaManZero his own series]]. |
| 374 | ** And Nina and Ace in SpiritualSuccessor ''VideoGame/TwentyXX'' have similar levels of killing power. A successful run is likely to feature them chewing through 900 or so enemies, ranging in size from dog-sized, spider-like {{Action Bomb}}s to shielded artillery pieces that take up an entire wall of the boss arena. And that's just a standard-difficulty run; going to Defiant difficulty and turning on Swarm is going to lead to much bigger numbers. |
| 375 | * Whichever of the three mercs you play as in ''VideoGame/{{Mercenaries}}: Playground of Destruction'' automatically qualifies, but plot-wise Mattias meets the description best. |
| 376 | * Solid Snake from ''VideoGame/MetalGear'' 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. |
| 377 | ** In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'', Meryl mentions Snake's reputation as a "one man army." Snake insists that he isn't. |
| 378 | ** However, there's the occasional mandatory sequence in which Snake or Raiden are forced to do just that. |
| 379 | *** Though they both easily get the one-man army status due to the fact they often have to take down the eponymous [[HumongousMecha Metal Gears]] (with an occasional Tank or Jet) on their own, regardless of how trigger-happy (or not) they are in the infiltration. |
| 380 | ** Of course, starting with ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'', the player can take the option of a [[PacifistRun no-kill playthrough]]. Also technically possible in the first game with the exception of bosses (who must be killed). In fact, based on that information, Snake is either the most genocidal killer ever... or the most pacifistic hero ever. |
| 381 | ** Though there's still the cutscene in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots'' where Snake, whose body is aged to what would be about our 70s, takes down about 7 guys at once in close quarters combat. |
| 382 | ** By the time of ''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance'', Raiden can and will literally cut his way through every single cyborg, Unmanned Gear, HumongousMecha and solid object stupid enough to stand in his way. It gets to the point that [[spoiler:a BreakingSpeech delivered by a boss in order to break his spirit only results in him coming to terms with his SuperpoweredEvilSide and ''becoming an even deadlier fighter.'']] |
| 383 | ** Similar story with ''VideoGame/SplinterCell'', where the protagonist is unable to pick up weapons lying around (at least in earlier titles), and must use the limited pistol and silenced gun ammo from the start of the level. He still manages to kill or knock out at least a few hundred people by the end of the game. |
| 384 | * In the ''VideoGame/MetalSlug'' series, the {{Mooks}} will often run screaming from the player character, and for good reason--they currently have three wars with the Rebellion Army, two alien invasion attempts, a ''demonic attack'', and an invasion from the center of the earth on their list of things defeated. Notice that the game plays trope literally: The player doesn't simply blast away ''Mooks'' and other infantry, but indeed, takes out dozens of tanks, combat helicopters, bombers, fighters, battle armors, ships, stationary guns, and, of course, [[HumongousMecha the bosses]]. Of course, the game being on the far side of [[SlidingScaleOfSillinessVersusSeriousness silly side]], it is all depicted in a most comical manner. |
| 385 | * The original one-''woman'' army is probably Samus Aran from the ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'' series. Miss Aran has blown up at least four planets (including a DarkWorld version of a planet) and wiped out three entire species all on her lonesome. By the end of each and every game, Samus has become a walking instrument of destruction, plowing through enemies with the Screw Attack and able to freeze, incinerate or otherwise decimate every Metroid she comes across. As with the Master Chief, the Space Pirates (her secondary enemy after the eponymous species) are terrified of her and refer to her as "the Hunter" in the Space Pirate Logs found in ''Metroid Prime'' and sequels. In fact, in ''Metroid Prime 2'', you can read the journal of a dead Galactic Federation soldier who maintains that Samus' exploits [[ShroudedInMyth must have been exaggerated]]. |
| 386 | ** Also in the second installment can be found some humorous logs from the Pirates, once they discover that Samus and [[EvilTwin Dark Samus]] are separate beings. "Horrific as it may sound, there are two of them now. [[ThisIsGonnaSuck We are bracing for a new assault.]]" |
| 387 | *** "Surely, we are cursed." |
| 388 | ** The first ''Metroid Prime'' also has Pirate logs that basically read, "We gotta find out how Samus's weapons work or otherwise we're screwed!". It gets especially hilarious when they describe certain prototypes, like their attempt to recreate her Morph Ball technology, which tended to horribly mutilate test subjects, crushing and twisting their skeletons. "Science Team wisely decided to end the project after this," indeed. |
| 389 | ** In short, {{Apocalyptic Log}}s where [[MookHorrorShow the apocalypse is you]]. |
| 390 | ** In the third installment, GFMC troopers will generally treat her as a larger-than-life hero, usually saying things to the tune of, "Samus Aran, it's an honor to meet you!", stopping just short of asking for autographs. |
| 391 | ** 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 [[KillItWithIce only weakness]] removed.'' |
| 392 | * ''Videogame/MiniRobotWars'' has several one-bot armies, but Leonid(The Shooting Hero) stands out. He fires at a really fast rate for Gunner Bots & can shoot in all directions. With the [[GatlingGood gatling gun]] upgrade, the machines might as well start waving the WhiteFlag. |
| 393 | * Your allies are pretty useless in ''VideoGame/MobileSuitGundamClimaxUC'', forcing you to kill everything yourself. |
| 394 | * Surprisingly, the HGame ''Monster Girl Quest'' has one in Granberia, the world's greatest swordsman, who regularly takes on entire cities worth of guards and soldiers (not in that way) just to prove her mettle. |
| 395 | * While something you'd generally want to avoid in ''VideoGame/MountAndBlade'', when you pull it off you feel like the biggest badass on the planet. Nothing like single-handedly slaughtering a two-hundred man army by yourself. |
| 396 | ** For those who are unfamiliar with the game, becoming an actual one-man army (against actual enemy parties which number around 50-150 on average) is a VERY difficult feat. You start off far weaker than every other soldier out in the world. And even by end game, you will only be as best as the elite soldiers that other vassals can easily recruit in the hundreds. Even on the easiest difficulty, charging down a group of 5-10 elite troops is no easy feat. On 100% difficulty, attempting to take on any more than 3 enemies at a time is just inviting trouble, and taking on 10 toe-to-toe would be plain suicidal. The closest a player can get to being a one-man army is by focusing on archery and defending castles from above during sieges, or horseback archery, which, with patience, good aim, a very fast horse, and a bit of luck to dodge the enemy projectiles, allows you to take down armies. |
| 397 | ** On the other hand, on default(read: Easy) difficulty, it's perfectly possible for a late-game character to walk into an army of lower-leveled enemies and take no damage whatsoever. One man can easily cut down a hundred angry looters without taking a scratch because of the power of their Armor of Invincibility. A shame it costs more than ten king's ransoms. NotHyperbole, by the way, you ''can'' ransom kings in this game. |
| 398 | * In ''[[VideoGame/{{Myth}} Myth 2]]'', Alric the Emperor of the Cath Buric can take on an entire army with the help of a magic sword that shoots lightning out to strike down his enemies, in fact it's suggested that you let him be a one man army considering that the lighting can kill your troops to. when he's not wielding that sword he has a magic spell that jumps from enemy to enemy blowing up each one. Once you run out of spells you still is unbeatable in single combat. His evil counterparts are even more badass emphasis on bad. By using the level editor with ''Myth 2'' you control soulblighter who is invincible to all but Alric's attack's. Balor soulblighter's predecessor is once again invincible with the added bonus of calling lighting down out of the sky. shiver has a range of spells well suited for taking out an army but not invincible. And the the deceiver can brainwash an entire army and does in one level. |
| 399 | * ''VideoGame/NetHack'''s endgame involves trying to sacrifice the Amulet of Yendor to your god and ascend to demi-godhood, which was ostensibly the point of the entire venture. The altars for doing this are guarded by [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse Death, Famine, and Pestilence]]; War is now the player, what with the massive amount of killing (if not outright genocide) that they've in the process of getting there. And quite goddamn deservedly, considering [[NintendoHard how difficult it is to pull it off]]. |
| 400 | ** This is actually lampshaded pretty brilliantly in-game. The Riders will eventually regenerate when killed, no matter what you do. One standard way to get rid of other regenerators such as trolls is through the use of a tinning kit on their remains. Trying this one one of the Horsemen leads to them springing back to life immediately with the quote "Yes... but War does not preserve its enemies." |
| 401 | *** You can also #chat to one of the riders, and they'll respond, "Who do you think you are, War?" If you source-dive, you'll even find the comment "War" == player |
| 402 | ** Some {{Roguelike}}s actually have a feature, genocide, for wiping out entire species. ''[=NetHack=]'' belongs to this group; the most common way to do it there is using a scroll of genocide, which in it's blessed state can genocide multiple species with one use. As if this wasn't enough, it's also possible for the player to "extinct" enemies, which basically means to ''genocide manually''--that is, kill enough of a particular type of enemy that the game stops spawning them. |
| 403 | ** On the other side of the coin, it's also perfectly possible of winning the game ''[[PacifistRun without killing a single being]]''. This is, of course, a lot harder than the more violent version, but also a lot more satisfying. |
| 404 | * The player's character in ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'' gains notoriety for this as the game progresses. In addition, a good character will express a feeling of being haunted by the hundreds of dead behind them to a party member in the final act. |
| 405 | ** Most likely not intended, but the first act involves the player killing, what according to the setting, is significant portion of the eponymous city, who have all decided to join thief's guilds. |
| 406 | *** If the player joins the ThievesGuild instead, you'll discover most of those are mooks from out of town. It's still a lot of mooks. |
| 407 | ** There's even a History Feat that points specifically to this, called "Orcslayer", or something similar. The description says that the "broken remains of the orcs clans curse the day you were born", making it unambiguous that you have slain the majority of the orcs of the region. |
| 408 | * In ''VideoGame/NinjaGaiden'' for the Xbox and its {{Updated Rerelease}}s, Ryu Hayabusa slaughters his way through the army of a small empire, starting with their anti-terrorist paramilitaries, then graduating to the conventional army. The body-count is easily in the thousands, and that's not even counting the dozens of ninjas he kills during a training exercise in the first level. If you start counting the ''demons'', then there's easily another coupl'a thousand. The really interesting part is, perhaps, that he takes on a fully-equipped modern-day army--sporting assault-rifles, grenade-launchers, and anti-tank weapons, as well as actual tanks and helicopter gunships--using nothing more technologically advanced than a composite bow. But then, he ''is'' [[ConservationOfNinjitsu a single]] {{Ninja}}. |
| 409 | ** Point of interest: Not only are the Vigoorian Army never established as "bad guys" in any way (meaning that you're basically killing your way through [[PunchClockVillain ordinary soldiers who are just following orders and trying to defend their homeland]] from ''you''), the first level sees you killing maybe a hundred ninjas from a rival clan. A ''friendly'' rival clan, whom you're visiting for some training. Ryu's excuse? "He had glaring holes in his defences. He would never have survived in the field, anyway." |
| 410 | * ''VideoGame/NinetyNineNights''. Every level is TheWarSequence, and you're the one who kills just about everything in sight. Oh! With a modicum of help from the two regiments that accompany you into battle, but really, they don't do a whole lot. |
| 411 | * ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'': Travis barrels through not just the ranks of assassins, but the countless {{mooks}} in the areas preceding them, and very rarely does he ever require backup. |
| 412 | * In ''VideoGame/NoOneLivesForever'', Kate Archer kills hundreds of enemy soldiers in her various missions, and far from not finding this at all unusual, her superiors find it so unbelievable they assume she's lying in her mission reports. |
| 413 | * 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... |
| 414 | * Amaterasu in ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}''. Oh dear kittens, ''Amaterasu''. Granted, she is a [[PhysicalGod goddess]], but still, she ploughs through monsters as if there's no tomorrow. |
| 415 | [[/folder]] |
| 416 | |
| 417 | [[folder:P-Z]] |
| 418 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Painkiller}}'' Daniel literally plows through thousands of demons occupying Purgatory, kills the generals of hell (who all range from 3 to 5 stories tall) [[spoiler:and battle your way into hell and kill [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu Lucifer]]. Yeah it's part of the story and thus a spoiler, but really how could you not see it coming?]] |
| 419 | * In ''VideoGame/PerfectDark'', while stealth is generally encouraged (and at times forced), Joanna is such a good fighter and so much more durable than her opponents that it's equally possible to simply blast the enemies and still win the missions, so long as said mission doesn't actively ''require'' you to avoid alerting or shooting guards. |
| 420 | * The Black Ops soldiers in ''VideoGame/PlanetSide''. They have ten times the staying power of a regular soldier, and can use [[DoAnythingSoldier any vehicle and weapon in the game]]. However, regular soldiers avert this. |
| 421 | * Invoked in ''Videogame/PlanetSide 2'''s Recursion Stat Tracker, a GameMod that adds [[AchievementSystem achievements]], which has a variety of killstreak achievements for outrageously high murder streaks. "One Man Platoon" for 48 kills in a row, "One Man Empire" at 100, "One Man, One Mission" at 250, and "One Man To Farm Them All" at 500. Recursion implies that the player is ''cheating'' when they get 50 kills in a row using only infantry weapons, giving them the "Scripted Cheater" achievement. |
| 422 | * ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'': |
| 423 | ** It is usually possible to play throughout the whole game with a single Pokémon. Simply use one Pokémon for battles, and others for [[{{PowerupLetdown}} useless HMs]]. One achievement in ''VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2'' is even gained when you single-handedly defeat the Elite Four with one Pokémon. This is made impossible in ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite'', where Pokémon gain less experience the higher level they are compared to their opponent. |
| 424 | ** The player character, who defeats the region's local evil organization alone for the most part[[note]]they actually tend to get the occasional help from the local Champion and Looker, an International Police agent[[/note]]. The original hero from ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'' in particular is [[LegendaryInTheSequel remembered for single-handedly taking down Team Rocket]]. And unlike later player characters, he didn't receive any help from the Champion or the police. |
| 425 | * Alex Mercer, from ''VideoGame/{{Prototype}}''. You even regularly get updates on how many military, civilian, and infected you've killed during the course of the game, and it ''very, '''very''' ''rapidly goes up into the thousands. |
| 426 | ** There is an Achievement for killing [[VideoGame/DeadRising 53,]][[VideoGame/Left4Dead 596]] Infected. |
| 427 | *** Let's put it this way; in a city caught in a three-way war between [[ArmiesAreEvil the government conspiracy]] and their [[PunchClockVillain USMC cannon fodder]], the EvilMatriarch and her [[ZombieApocalypse zombie army]], and Alex with a bit of advice from a middle aged doctor and his college-age sister, ''[[PersonOfMassDestruction Alex wins]]''. |
| 428 | ** James Heller from [[VideoGame/{{Prototype2}} the sequel]] doesn't seem to face the sheer numbers that Mercer does, but still demolishes entire legions of bio-enhanced SuperSoldier troops, armored columns, squadrons of helicopters, and untold numbers of infected mooks. [[spoiler: And then he kills Mercer.]] |
| 429 | * Some {{Shoot Em Up}}s like ''VideoGame/RaptorCallOfTheShadows'' and ''Stargunner'' tend to do this, with one ship going against an entire enemy fleet and winning. |
| 430 | * VideoGame/{{Rayman}} has often fought entire armies more or less by himself, whether they consist of robo pirates or black lums. |
| 431 | * John Marston in ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption''. Even if the player goes out of their way to kill as few people as possible, over the course of the game they will probably end up killing more people than every RealLife Wild West gunslinger ''combined''. Most players report a final kill count upwards of ''two thousand men''. Which doesn't go unnoticed - [[spoiler:when the Bureau decides to kill John in the end, they send the US Army. A company-sized group, at least, easily two hundred men. Against one. And John still probably ends up killing most of them.]] |
| 432 | * Though not canonical examples, Parker and Mason, from ''VideoGame/RedFaction'' and ''Red Faction: Guerrilla'' respectively, end up appearing as one-man armies, considering how hideously incompetent [[RedShirt the rest of the Red Faction]] seems to be. The Red Faction wouldn't have got anything done if it weren't for those two. |
| 433 | * In ''[[VideoGame/KunioKun Renegade]]'', Mr. K is a one-man goon squad, beating down every other gang in town all by himself. (No, there's no CoOpMultiplayer here, though other ''Kunio-Kun'' games do have it.) |
| 434 | * ''VideoGame/RepublicAtWar'': Force-sensitive units are powerful enough to conquer a planet by themselves. |
| 435 | * In the ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' series, nearly every playable protagonist qualifies by default, but special mentions include: |
| 436 | ** In ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2'' and [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil2Remake its remake]], Umbrella agent HUNK slaughters his way through the G-virus' toughest zombies singlehandedly to reach extraction. It goes even further in the remake, where it's implied he's been actively fighting for days on his lonesome. |
| 437 | ** 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/ResidentEvilTheUmbrellaChronicles. 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. |
| 438 | ** Even when caught by surprise during the outbreak, 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. |
| 439 | ** By the end of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'', Leon has singlehandedly killed hundreds of Ganados. When the BigBad confronts you at the end, it's no wonder he's alone: you've probably wiped out most, if not all, of his army. There's a note you can find about a third of the way through the first disk, which basically just reads "We gotta do something or he'll kill them all!" |
| 440 | * The basic premise of ''VideoGame/RiskOfRain'' and [[VideoGame/RiskOfRain2 its sequel]]. You're a lone survivor of an assault on your ship, crash landed on a hostile planet and have to fight your way through varius biomes filled with increasingly strong enemies. All by yourself with nothing but the weapons you brought with you and an increasingly hilarious amount of items you find. |
| 441 | * In ''VideoGame/SaintsRow1'', you played as a custom made character who had to take down three rival gangs, mostly by yourself. Somewhat subverted in the fact that you can take along members of your gang with you on missions, and they could wield the same weapons that you do, but doubly subverted in the fact that they were exponentially weaker than you and could not take as much fire as you. In the end, [[spoiler:it takes a planted bomb to off you.]] ''VideoGame/SaintsRow2'', [[spoiler:however, confirms that your character is still alive]]. |
| 442 | ** Taken to its peak with ''VideoGame/SaintsRowTheThird'', where the player, being the boss of the Saints, takes down a multinational criminal organisation, stops a [[spoiler:zombie outbreak]] and even [[spoiler:tears apart an army equipped with sci-fi level technology created for the single purpose of stopping the Saints.]] Depending on the ending you get, the boss tops all of his previous achievements by [[spoiler:destroying a massive flying aircraft carrier.]] |
| 443 | ** And then came ''VideoGame/SaintsRowIV''. Outside the simulation, you're scary - capable of tearing through Zin and murderbots even without a mech suit. ''Inside'' the simulation, or in superpower-granting power armour, you are ''terrifying'', capable of ripping a Zin heavy bomber out of the air with psychic powers, charging it up with lightning, and then throwing it at people, clearing entire intersections with a kinetic super-stomp, creating a small nuclear explosion with a sufficiently long-distance dive attack, or setting off a chain of explosions with a blast of fire. |
| 444 | * Tony Montana from ''VideoGame/ScarfaceTheWorldIsYours'' can easily get over a thousand kills to his name by the end of the game, and that is without actively farming kills from respawning enemies. |
| 445 | * Sam "Serious" Stone from ''VideoGame/SeriousSam''. As the Gamespy reviewer put it back in 2001, "[[http://archive.gamespy.com/reviews/march01/samiam/ Never before, in all my days of gaming, can I recall a game leaving a bigger body count -- and since I was alive when Pong first debuted as a home television game, its safe to say I've seen it all, or at least most of it.]]" |
| 446 | ** Even DOOMGUY only comes to [[https://imgur.com/AcMmoiW around a fourth of this guy's body count]] |
| 447 | * In ''VideoGame/SengokuRance'', it's possible to make any foot soldier unit in the game into this by giving it the Fellow Troops' Revenge ability, which allows a special attack that deals damage equal to the number of casualties the unit has suffered. Since troop counts can easily reach and exceed 1000-2000 men per unit in this game, a foot soldier unit that's been reduced to a handful of men (or just one, ideally) can slaughter hundreds of troops per turn, assuming you can cover them with other infantry units and keep an enemy counterattack from wiping them off the map. |
| 448 | ** Of course, the most literal example would have to be Ogawa Kentarou [[spoiler: after becoming a demon.]] |
| 449 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Shadowverse}}'', Nicola Adel is a single individual with enough power to rival entire guilds in Isunia, and who can casually send challengers into ATwinkleInTheSky. His listless nature is what keeps him from single-handedly disrupting the order of the country. |
| 450 | * The ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' franchise has several instances of this trope, both played straight and deconstructed: |
| 451 | ** In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIIINocturne'', the Demi-Fiend kills absolutely everyone and everything, without any allies other than a handful of demons he recruits. |
| 452 | ** In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIVApocalypse'', the OmnicidalNeutral ending turns Nanashi into exactly that. By the end he is [[spoiler:the only one left alive]]. |
| 453 | ** ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiStrangeJourney'' has the protagonist doing the work of an entire military squad. |
| 454 | ** Lupa and Varin in ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'' can - and have - taken down each other's tribes by themselves. |
| 455 | --->'''Lupa''': I will buy you some time.\ |
| 456 | '''Cielo''': Against all dose guys!? Now I know you crazy!\ |
| 457 | '''Lupa''': You do not understand. I was the leader of my tribe. You are the ones in danger.\ |
| 458 | '''Gale''': What do you mean?\ |
| 459 | '''Lupa''': The Wolves fell to Varin alone. |
| 460 | ** ''VideoGame/Persona1'': Reiji Kido (Chris in the ''Revelations'' localization) begins the game by storming SEBEC headquarters by himself. He spends the first part of the game fighting by himself the same enemies that give your four-or-five man band so much trouble, and you find him no worse for the wear. What happens to him depends on what choices you make; if you follow the GuideDangIt steps to recruit him, he's still in tip-top shape when he joins the party, but if you don't recruit him, you'll find him again a few dungeons later collapsed on the floor because it got too much for him to handle (or he ran out of medicine). |
| 461 | ** ''VideoGame/Persona2: Eternal Punishment'': |
| 462 | *** Tatsuya Suou spends two thirds of the game wrecking the Tenchu army (including their mechs, at least two Bosses and a gigantic military vessel) all by himself. The whole thing is further elaborated in his scenario in tbe PSP remake, where the player finds out exactly what he's been fighting. Lampshaded by the main cast several times: |
| 463 | ----> '''Baofu''': He has way more experience than you guys, and some guts... Heck, we'd be in his way. |
| 464 | *** Baofu himself killed 25 mafia hitmen prior to the events of the game, and halfway through he successfully storms their main headquarters all by himself. Right up until he runs to the MiniMecha, that is. |
| 465 | *** Deconstructed by Katsuya, who attempts to do this against the {{Corrupt Cop}}s, up until he comes face to face with the special units. The party reaches him in time to help him, but after the fight he admits that this was reckless of him and he wouldn't have been able to win by himself. |
| 466 | * Gargaz, the protagonist of ''Videogame/ShootasBloodAndTeef'' is a Ork Shoota who in a vein similar to Kais from Fire Warrior despite being a mook within his faction manages to, in a short period of time, fight his way through an Ork WAAAGH, an Imperial Guard regiment, a squadron of White Scars Primaris, [[spoiler:a Genestealer cult]] and even taking down an [[HumongousMecha Imperial Knight]] by himself. All because [[DisproportionateRetribution his old Warboss stole his topknot]]. |
| 467 | * Averted in ''VisualNovel/{{Snatcher}}'', where Random Hajile is considered highly skilled because he's managed to hunt down ''four'' Snatchers in ''a month''. |
| 468 | * ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'': |
| 469 | ** Sonic the hedgehog could count as a one ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin hedgehog]]'' army. We've seen him regularly annihilate entire [[VideoGame/SonicUnleashed armies of killer robots]] with ease, infiltrate into Eggman's bases while taking out everything in his way, and destroy Eggman's flying warships, space fleets and even humongous [[VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles Death Star-esque doomsday weapons]]. In ''Anime/SonicX'', he's even sought by the government for his power and the ease with which he regularly defeats Eggman, even after this one overwhelmed authorities. |
| 470 | ** Tails in ''VideoGame/TailsAdventure'' is a one fox-kit army, which is impressive because he's 8. |
| 471 | ** Shadow was essentially created to be one. Every game he's been in usually has him single-handedly taking apart entire armies of humans, robots, aliens, etc, all in the same day. What makes him more dangerous is that he doesn't refrain from killing. |
| 472 | * Mitsurugi in the ''VideoGame/SoulSeries'' is a mercenary who explicitly sides with the outnumbered sides to fight more people. Even explicitly mentioned in his good ending in ''[=SoulCalibur=] III'': "If you want to kill me, you had better bring a whole army." Yet even he is outdone by [[BigBad Nightmare,]] who completely annihilates a huge army of Knights in the opening of ''Soul Calibur III''. In his ''weakest state.'' |
| 473 | * In the single-player campaigns of ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'', the player characters are all only about fourteen years old, yet still capable of single-handedly taking on a horde of Octarians, without any formal training at that (outside of [[VideoGame/Splatoon2 Agent 8]]'s previous experience in the Octarian military). |
| 474 | * Your Character in the [[spoiler:Space Stage]] of ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'' can be this, once the weapons on their spaceship are powerful enough. They can go to each and every planet of a species they're at war with, and bomb the cities of every one, eventually destroying/taking over the whole empire. And if they die? Not a problem. "Due to recent advances in cloning technology and consciousness transferring, your hom planet have got a new [name of spaceship] ready for you!" You can just go back and keep fighting! |
| 475 | * ''Franchise/SpyroTheDragon'': |
| 476 | ** The title character in every single one of his games, especially the ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfSpyro'' trilogy. At times he'll have a dozen or more huge, powerful enemies, some with multiple health bars, all attacking him at once, and a minute later they'll all be lying dead. |
| 477 | ** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfSpyroANewBeginning'': According to Ingitus, the Apes were originally losing to the dragons until Cynder showed up and turned the entire tide of the war on her own. She took out the Guardians without much effort, and it takes Spyro unlocking Aether Breath to actually beat her. |
| 478 | * The ''USS Cheyenne'' from Creator/TomClancy's ''SSN'' is a One Sub Navy. Of course, it does have a serious technological advantage. This is acknowledged in the {{novelization}}, where the captain is promoted to rear admiral and receives both the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Order of Mao Tze-Dong. |
| 479 | * The [=PCs=] of the ''[[VideoGame/{{STALKER}} S.T.A.L.K.E.R.]]'' series. Sure, you're far from bulletproof, but over the course of a single game you'll rack up a body count nearing the quadruple digits just from the main storyline, let alone all the extra murdering you'll do for gear, side missions or [[ForTheEvulz for fun]]. You'll face mutant wildlife of several flavors alongside hundreds upon hundreds of brainwashed Monolith troops, zombies, bandits, and any member of any of the factions you've pissed off, which can possibly include both [[WellIntentionedExtremist Duty]] and [[ChaoticNeutral Freedom]], two of the largest factions in the Zone. |
| 480 | ** You can start proving the Marked One's status as a OMA within five minutes of starting the game, by taking down an entire car park full of bandits and rescuing a captured rookie Loner with (most likely) nothing more than a leather jacket and a Makarov pistol. The guy who offers to go with you calls you an idiot when you tell him to stay back, but is amazed when you actually do it. Later on, you clear out at least one military-held base, raid a bandit hideout and kill their leader (and probably everyone inside), and blast your way through a checkpoint held by [[BrainwashedAndCrazy the Monolith.]] |
| 481 | * ''Franchise/StarCraft'': |
| 482 | ** Sarah Kerrigan, who as a human was only a mediocre Ghost (and being the first ''VideoGame/{{StarCraft|I}}'' game, you couldn't heal her, making it dangerous to use her in battle), as the Zerg Queen of Blades, she had great armor, huge hitpoints, a melee attack which killed most infantry in one swipe and larger units with 2 or 3, could Entangle from a distance, and could destroy groups with Psionic Storms. During her attack on the ''Amerigo'', when she's ambushed by 20 Marines, she's able to kill every one of them without dying. |
| 483 | ** Zeratul, the unit with one of the strongest attacks, and also permanent stealth. He also does that in cutscenes. In one mission with proper microing, you can use him to kill half a Zerg base alone. |
| 484 | ** The sequel has Tychus Findlay piloting Odin, the SuperPrototype to [[HumongousMecha Thor]]. Like Duke, Tychus can lay siege to enemy bases as long as someone provides some healing. |
| 485 | ** November Annabella "Nova" Terra is one of the most powerful human telepaths and telekinetics in existence. Her telekinetic mind blasts can be measured in [[HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure Hiroshimas]]. She's also a well-trained Ghost operative. Too bad her game got cancelled. |
| 486 | ** [[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/StarCraftIILegacyOfTheVoid 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]]. |
| 487 | ** In ''VideoGame/StarCraftII'', Artanis is able to [[HoldTheLine defend a Xel'naga temple against a zerg swarm]] ''all by himself''. He's even acknowledged as a true Dark Templar for accomplishing this. |
| 488 | ** Really, most 'Hero' units can be considered this, as they are many times stronger and tougher than any normal unit, and usually carry abilities that makes them capable of taking on multiple top-tech units with proper control. |
| 489 | * ''Franchise/StarFox'': |
| 490 | ** In the original ''VideoGame/StarFox1'' 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. |
| 491 | ** In ''VideoGame/StarFox64'', the Star Fox team presents their "fee" (kill count) to the Cornerian army for their services. Depending on how high the number is, General Pepper has reactions ranging from "It was worth it," to "WHAT!?!" |
| 492 | ** In ''VideoGame/StarFoxZero'' reboot, this says a lot when [[spoiler:Fox has to go against all four Star Wolf pilots in Venom and defeat them... ''by himself''!]] |
| 493 | * Lampshaded in ''VideoGame/{{Starlancer}}''. While the player himself doesn't receive any special recognition beyond a few medals, his squadron are described in one news broadcast as "seemingly hell-bent on winning the war all by themselves". |
| 494 | ** The distant sequel ''VideoGame/{{Freelancer}}'', though, subverts the previous game by revealing that the Alliance-Coalition war lasts for another 100 years before the Coalition ultimately wins, no matter how many enemy ships the player's squadron has eliminated. Played straight in ''Freelancer'' itself, where Trent can single-handedly destroy enemy battleships in a one-man fighter. |
| 495 | * Featured in the classic ''VideoGame/StarRaiders'': the only person who can stop the Zylon fleet and protect the galaxy's scattered starbases is you. |
| 496 | * In ''VideoGame/StarRuler'', military strength is tied to more things than numbers alone. Therefore, a lone mega-battleship can be worth fleets of lesser craft. |
| 497 | * In ''VideoGame/StarWarsBattlefront'' and ''Battlefront II'', your character is one of dozens of ordinary mooks in large-scale battles. Despite this, the player is expected to rack up enormous kill counts, because the rest of his army is made up of complete idiots. You can personally slaughter over two-thirds of the enemy forces but ''still'' have your army lose the fight! |
| 498 | ** Or it can go completely the other way, and you can be the sole survivor of your army and bring down hundreds of the enemy. And good god, does that feel good. |
| 499 | * On that ''Franchise/StarWars'' note, Kyle Katarn from the ''VideoGame/DarkForcesSaga'', who has killed quite a large number of the Empire's servants and other miscreants in his journeys. |
| 500 | ** There's a reason the EU establishes him as the new Jedi Battlemaster by the time he gets into the books. |
| 501 | ** His apprentice Jaden Korr almost singlehandedly destroyed a conspiracy to revive a dead ancient Sith Lord, then (re)killed the Sith Lord Marka Ragnos. |
| 502 | * Player characters in ''Videogame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'' are frequently given missions that they're told, point blank, they're being asked to do because it's too dangerous to send the army to handle it. Literally: "That factory is too well defended for our troops to take - go kill the garrison and signal us when it's safe to come in and occupy it." It's especially common on Balmorra. It could be said to be technically averted--you're generally not fighting alone after the first half of the prologue unless you specifically send your companion away. That being said, you do pull off an awful lot of stuff for a two-man team... While it's to be expected even in-universe that the Jedi Knight and Sith Lord characters would be one-man armies (that's what Jedi and Sith ''are''), the trope applies just as much to the BadassNormal characters. Particular note should be paid to the trooper on Ord Mantell, who unlike most other classes has to take on the big final mission of their starting planet's arc solo. |
| 503 | * ''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 Platform/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. |
| 504 | * Inspector Tequila was pretty badass in the John Woo movie ''Film/HardBoiled'', but in the video game ''VideoGame/{{Stranglehold}}'', he truly turns into a One-Man Army, gunning his way through... oh, somewhere in the vicinity of 1000 enemies. Ranging from Mooks, to Hitmen, to Russian mercenaries, and everything in between. He also racks up at least 70 million dollars worth of property damage. He basically eliminates ''three'' major [[TheSyndicate crime syndicates]] singlehandedly. |
| 505 | * Torque in ''VideoGame/TheSuffering'' kills hundreds of hideous monsters while fighting his way off Carnate Island, and all by himself outside of the occasional EscortMission. |
| 506 | * ''VideoGame/SuikodenII'' has Luca Blight. In one army battle, your team sets up an ambush to try and take him down with their entire goddamn army. They manage to pin him down even wound him. [[OhCrap Then he gets angry]]. The battle ends after that with your characters expressing relief that there weren't as many deaths as they expected. |
| 507 | ** In game, to defeat him, you have to make 3 groups of characters to attack him, and ever after the three fights, you have to defeat him in a character duel. All of this after he is struck with an arrow. |
| 508 | *** 'An arrow?' AN ARROW? By his death, Luca has taken five barrages of arrows (each arrow apparently being strong enough to one-shot his elite guards which take multiple character's attacks in-battle to kill). He ends up dueling TheHero with at least SEVEN arrows still stuck in him. And he can STILL kick your ass. Better remember to keep the Hero healed up before going into the duel. |
| 509 | * In Telltale Games' ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead'', [[BadassNormal former university professor-turned-convict]] Lee Everett qualifies for this in Episode 5 after [[spoiler:being bitten by a walker when Clem is kidnapped.]] Despite [[spoiler:potentially having amputated his arm to stop the bite from spreading]], he cuts through a horde of walkers in order to [[spoiler: rescue Clem.]] |
| 510 | * ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'': |
| 511 | ** Mario always takes out hordes of Bowser's mooks. Also Luigi in the rare cases where he gets to be the protagonist rather than just a secondary character. |
| 512 | ** His [[EvilTwin evil counterpart Wario]] manages to one-up him by effortlessly beating up mobs of enemy {{mooks}} and a giant one-eyed, tentacled, civilization-destroying black gem in ''VideoGame/WarioWorld''. He also takes down [[SealedEvilInACan sealed evils in a can]] on a regular basis throughout his ''VideoGame/WarioLand'' series. |
| 513 | ** And just think, Mario isn't half the badass that [[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/307402 Super Communist Mario]] is... |
| 514 | ** Mario's only a one man army when Luigi isn't with him. Then it becomes a two man army. Moreover, he has been a part of at least 3 ''four-person armies'' (all of whom have also included Luigi). |
| 515 | ** Regardless, he manages to destroy entire fleets of tanks and airships which have cannons, bombs, and flamethrowers on a regular day. The only reason why they're never afraid of him is probably because Bowser is the only one able to match his badassery. |
| 516 | ** And all they ever need to use? Their jumping ability. The SuperSpeed and SuperStrength come in handy, but they don't really need them to win. |
| 517 | * ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'''s Endless Melee/Brawl. You get one life to take out as many enemies as possible. Getting every achievement means you're going to have to take down ''hundreds''. |
| 518 | * In ''VideoGame/SupremeCommander'' the player is literally a one man army. Gate technology only allows small amounts of mass to be teleported, so commanders are teleported to the battlefield where they build and command the actual, robotic fighting force. |
| 519 | * Agents from ''VideoGame/{{Syndicate}}'', both the originals and the remake. In the original, one to four Agents under your control can mow down any number of police and enemy Agents similarly equipped as themselves. In the remake, Miles Kilo and the Wulf Western Agents can also scythe through entire units of FacelessGoons, as well as Agents equal or superior to themselves. |
| 520 | * In the original version of ''VideoGame/TalesOfMajEyal'', back when it was still called ''Tales of Middle-Earth'', you track down and kill ''every'' single Tolkien villain, ever. Up to and including the local equivalent of {{Satan}}, Morgoth (Sauron's boss). And then you go ToHellAndBack to kill him ''there.'' Some versions throw in a few gods and demons from other series, such as the [[CosmicHorrorStory Cthulhu Mythos]], ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'', and general mythology. |
| 521 | * ''VideoGame/TailConcerto'' gives us Waffle Ryebread, a NiceGuy of a police officer stationed to the little town of Porto, in which the official art book refers to as "A not-so-reliable Police Officer". Said officer was not only able to completely shut down the antics of The Black Cats Gang while exposing Fool's black market planning, but also take down ''a giant mechanical monster'' within a span of ''a day'' using nothing but a standardized MiniMecha that shoots bubbles. |
| 522 | * The Engineer in ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' hits this in his Meet the Team video, where he [[CutscenePowerToTheMax scores more kills than any other Meet The Team (grand total of 224, 15 onscreen).]] |
| 523 | ** Also, the Soldier went on a Nazi killing spree on his own during World War 2 and didn't stop until he learned the war was over in 1949. |
| 524 | ** In the "Meet the Medic" video, the Medic and Heavy are a two-man army (close enough, right?) when the Heavy is ubercharged. They kill so many Soldiers as a team that they can [[AtopAMountainOfCorpses pose on a pile of them]] at the end of the video. |
| 525 | ** The Pyro is a One-[[AmbiguousGender Man/Woman/Thing]] Army in their Meet the Team video, as they slaughter the entire BLU team off-duty. Of course, [[SugarBowl the way they see it is different...]] |
| 526 | * Melqart's first appearance in ''VideoGame/TearsToTiara2'' has him wipe out an entire legion by himself. He is a WarGod. Though his power depends on the supply of mana the user is able to offer him, and during said appearance TheHero had stored up 7 years worth for such an eventuality. Even so, the WarGod is still far stronger than anyone else in the party. |
| 527 | * In ''VideoGame/TIEFighter'', it is in fact possible to destroy one of the big Rebel cruisers with a '''TIE Fighter'''. The warship has shields and many laser turrets; the fighter has no shields, no warheads, and only two laser cannons. Of course, it's nearly impossible to do this if other ships are around; even with just the one ship, it's a pretty big accomplishment that requires a lot of hard work and fancy flying. Similarly, in its predecessor ''VideoGame/XWing'', the first 12-mission campaign centered around an elaborate plot to smuggle a bomb onto a specific Star Destroyer to blow it up; however, a sufficiently skilled pilot could shoot down that specific Star Destroyer (which acted as the base for the enemy in every mission) with a single X-Wing every single time, leading to promotion to general and every combat medal in the game being awarded after the first mission. |
| 528 | ** In the final game of the series, ''X-Wing Alliance'', it was ''laughably'' easy to become an instant ace in the ''very first official mission''. In the training missions, [[strike:[=LucasArts=]]] Totally Games even accounted for the very skilled players, by having recorded lines from your trainer if you manage to, for example, destroy the entire convoy. |
| 529 | * In ''VideoGame/TimeCrisis'', the protagonist, Richard Miller, is explicitly described as a "one-man army" in the opening scenes. Although his body count is somewhat less than the other examples, he does manage to completely clear out a castle being used as a crime base in about 15 minutes. The rest of the games feature two-man armies. |
| 530 | * Lara in most of the ''Franchise/TombRaider'' games is shown to be kicking ass all by her lonesome, but the final level of ''VideoGame/TombRaiderII'' takes it to the next level by having her fend off a home invasion against the remnants of a cult she destroyed after killing their leader. Armed with only a shotgun, Lara kills at least two dozen cultists by herself and goes to take a shower (not before shooting the camera out after saying that you've [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall seen enough]]) after all is said and done. |
| 531 | * In the 2013 reboot of ''[[VideoGame/TombRaider2013 Tomb Raider]]'', Lara transforms into one over the course of the game. Especially noticeable during the final stages of the game, when she's confronted with and plows through [[spoiler:an army of undead samurai warriors]]. |
| 532 | -->'''Lara:''' [[BringIt Alright you bastards, let's see what you got!]] |
| 533 | * ''VideoGame/TotalWar'': |
| 534 | ** The original ''Total War'' engine (used in ''VideoGame/ShogunTotalWar'' and ''VideoGame/MedievalTotalWar'') ties general rank (gained by winning battles) to the health of the general. At the highest rank generals become so close to unstoppable that it takes almost an entire army worth of soldiers to grind them down. |
| 535 | ** ''VideoGame/ShogunTotalWar'': Whereas other units represent groups of soldiers, kensai are powerful single swordsmen. They're so powerful that, if you place one at a choke point (so that he can't be flanked or surrounded), he can take out whole units on his own. |
| 536 | ** ''VideoGame/TotalWarWarhammer'': The hero system gives us a number of single-unit generals that can wipe out hordes of lesser foes on their own. |
| 537 | *** Kholek Sun-Eater, with some clever use of magical items and his unique skill, can gain up to 90% damage reduction. Added to his already massive armour and HP, Kholek can solo entire armies as long as you keep his morale up. |
| 538 | *** Taurox the Brass Bull has a special trait rewarding him for managing to be this, "Army of One", which is granted if he successfully defeats an enemy army above a certain size if he's the only surviving unit for his faction. |
| 539 | ---->''Ever as his warherd lay dead around him, Taurox raged on across the battlefield, killing everything he could find.'' |
| 540 | ** ''VideoGame/TotalWarThreeKingdoms'': Zig-zagged depending on the game setting. In ''Romance'', generals are single entities that can handle hundreds of men on their own and single-handedly turn the tide of battle in an instant (not unlike [[Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms the source material]]). In ''Records'', they're highly skilled and come with a powerful bodyguard unit, but still only human. |
| 541 | * ''VideoGame/{{Uncharted}}'': Double subverted with Nathan Drake. He's [[ActionSurvivor of average build and panics when he gets into shootouts,]] but he still massacres trained, better-armed, better-supplied soldiers, pirates, thugs, and mercenaries by the hundred in each game. In the second game he kills his way through a private army invading an entire country and even multiple attack helicopters and main battle tanks can't stop him, nor can magical super-strong mutants. By the end of the series he's rocking a body count in the quadruple digits. His companion Chloe Frazer is a lesser example, but between her role as an NPC in the main series, her implied off-screen adventures, and especially her role as the player character in ''Lost Legacy'', she easily has several hundred kills to her name as well. |
| 542 | * ''VideoGame/{{Unreal|I}}'' features Prisoner 849, a convict of the PrisonShip Vortex Rikers whose only desire is to get out of [[DeathWorld Na Pali]] in one piece, and stops at nothing to achieve such objective, such as [[spoiler:actually ''killing'' the dangerous higher rank members of a ProudWarriorRace]]. In the ExpansionPack ''Return to Na Pali'', after rampaging through Na Pali a second time, [[FeaturelessProtagonist they]] actually begin to ''chase the Skaarj'' in their quest. |
| 543 | --> ''"There are Skaarj everywhere. But this time, I'm hunting them... they didn't seem to know I was coming."'' |
| 544 | ** The ''VideoGame/OperationNaPali'' mod for ''VideoGame/UnrealTournament'' features 046 as the protagonist. In addition to getting ''Tournament''[='=]s regular arsenal (which already triumphs over ''Unreal''[='=]s already powerful gear), 046 gets [[spoiler:the Translocator and, later in the game, the OneHitKill Instagib Rifle]]. Even after [[spoiler:being stripped of his gear ''twice'']], he ''still'' remains a force to be reckoned with. |
| 545 | * ''VideoGame/VagrantStory'': Ashley Riot doesn't need reinforcements... he ''is'' the reinforcements. Almost hits the trope by name: "Gods... is he even human? He fights with the strength of a brigade..." This is what the Riskbreakers like Ashley were trained to be. There's never more than one of them sent on any mission, because ''one is always enough''.%%ZCE. Explain how and why. |
| 546 | * ''VideoGame/ValkyriaChronicles'' introduces an enemy called Selvaria, a Valkyria soldier who can crush an entire squad of soldiers without backup. The first time you meet her, the only thing that's safe from her is a tank, and said tank most certainly cannot damage her, as she can deflect ''anything'' it fires at her, and this whole thing is exacerbated by the fact that you're fighting a MASSIVE TANK with SIX MACHINE GUNS on it at the same time. The NEXT time you meet her, even the tanks aren't safe, and the mission becomes a mad dash for the enemy camp while desperately trying to slow her down before she can destroy your base camp. The third time you meet her, she's lost her invulnerability and tank-killing powers, but is so fast the only hope you have of hitting her is sneaking up behind her, and her range has increased so that she can hit almost ANYTHING on the map. Later, [[spoiler:Alicia, one of your units, becomes one of these too, and, while generally slower, she's powerful enough to beat Selvaria in a 1 on 1 fight, then proceeds to rip apart the enemy forces without breaking a sweat.]] |
| 547 | * ''VideoGame/VandalHearts'', being a StrategyRPG, largely relies on you ''not'' running a character straight into the throng of an enemy army intent on taking them all down. "Largely." If you manage to [[GuideDangIt find all Heavenly Keys]] and complete all [[BonusLevel Trials of Toroah]], you'll become able to upgrade Ash into the [[PurposefullyOverpowered Vandalier class,]] which not only gives him some of the highest raw stats in the game as well as a 100% chance of blocking attacks coming from the front ''and'' a very high chance of blocking attacks coming from the sides, it also exists outside of the TacticalRockPaperScissors system of the game and, far more importantly, gives Ash access to ''all the spells in the game'' as well as ''an infinite stock of all the items in the game.'' This includes a ''disgustingly'' powerful offensive spell with infinite-range AOE and Life Orbs, which resore all of one character's HP and MP. Basically, the moment Ash becomes a Vandalier, he turns into such a big GameBreaker that never moving a single inch from your starting position but instead just letting Ash wipe out all remaining enemies and bosses standing between you and the FinalBoss becomes a perfectly valid strategy. |
| 548 | * The Ubersreik Five of ''[[VideoGame/TheEndTimesVermintide Vermintide]]'' and ''VideoGame/VermintideII'' (Kerillian, Bardin Goreksson, Markus Kruber, Sienna Fuegonasus, and Victor Saltzpyre) take this to ridiculous levels, especially considering all but one of them [[BadassNormal have no magic, superhuman physicals, or ultra-rare gear]] ([[EmpoweredBadassNormal until the second game's later DLC anyway]]). Given the horde-based game design, it's common for the team to kill over a thousand enemies in a single mission, and between the two games and their expansions there are several dozen such missions, putting the team's count into the ''tens of thousands.'' In the first game most of the enemies are Skaven Clanrats, who are only slightly inferior to professional human soldiers, and the average quality of the opposition is brought up by 10-15% of the enemy force consisting of elites and specials, who range from about on par with an elite human soldier (e.g. Stormvermin) to outright ridiculously dangerous (e.g.[[MoreDakka Ratling Gunners]] in an otherwise mostly 16th century setting). Not to mention the [[GiantMook Rat Ogres]]. The sequel ups the ante with northmen Marauders and beastmen Gors (each about on par with an average human soldier) being about as common as Clanrats and their respective factions each bringing in their own elites, specials, and monsters to complement the Skaven, including dark wizards, massive trolls, and hundreds of heavily armored seven-foot tall daemonic super soldiers. Yet the Five, if anything, go through them ''easier'' than they did the Skaven in the first game due to the new gear and upgrades they receive. Keep in mind that this is a setting where, under normal conditions, 20,000 troops is considered a respectable army for a mid-sized country;[[note]]For example, "Knights of the Grail" states that the Bretonnian dukedom of L'Anguille would struggle to raise 1,000 knights and 10,000 men-at-arms, "Empire at War" explicitly puts the Imperial Electoral Province of Hochland's army at around 18,000 at full muster, "Heart of Chaos" has the full musters of Ostland and Ostermark capping out at 10,000 and 8,00 respectively with lots of preparation in 1713, and "Empire Army: Warrior Priest" puts the full muster of the Imperial Electoral Province of Ostland as being in the low tens of thousands in the present of 2519.[[/note]] these five individuals alone kill over twice that many in at most a few years! |
| 549 | * The Admiral Proudmoore from ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} III'', even without his bodyguards is capable of killing thousand of orcs, trolls, ogres and taurens. |
| 550 | ** Broxigar in the ''Warcraft: War of the Ancients'' trilogy of books, specifically the last one. He goes out in a blaze of glory against [[BigBad Sargeras]] after having killed dozens, maybe hundreds, of demons. |
| 551 | ** A somewhat common joke in the fandom is that the players in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' are "walking holocausts." Considering how they single-handedly kill hundreds upon hundreds of enemies on their own, it's a disturbingly accurate description. |
| 552 | * ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'': The Tenno themselves. One lone warframe can kill dozens of enemies in a single mission, while a standard squad of four can easily kill hundreds. They are, canonically, fighting every other faction in the Origin System at the same time and ''winning'' despite being outnumbered by orders of magnitude at every turn. |
| 553 | * If there's any person who should be fit to provide the picture for this trope, it would be Captain Titus of ''VideoGame/Warhammer40000SpaceMarine''. Why? Well, not wanting to spoil too much, but he makes other one-man armies look comparatively ''sissy'' compared to what he's dished out over the course of the game. [[spoiler:Deconstructed at the end. The sheer ridiculousness of Titus' deeds make the Inquisition suspicious of him.]] |
| 554 | * Any sufficiently upgraded and/or experienced unit in ''VideoGame/WarlockMasterOfTheArcane''. Heroes are notable example, being able to gain immunity to certain types of damage. |
| 555 | * ''VideoGame/WarlordsBattlecry 3'' offers you both a race with which to build a base and an army, and a hero with which to either help the first, or to send them against the enemies. A high level hero built with the latter in mind doesn't need a base at all, killing even titans all by themselves. |
| 556 | ** Common army units can gain levels as well, and though it doesn't reach the extent outlined above, a level 10 unit is a nightmare, even if it's just a normally weak slime, skeleton, or pikeman. |
| 557 | * Rubi Malone from ''VideoGame/{{Wet}}'' is another one woman army, taking out a couple of criminal gangs, and about two thousand mooks over the course of the game. |
| 558 | * Given the [[ArtificialStupidity average wingman NPCs]], this is often how ''VideoGame/WingCommander'' missions get finished. |
| 559 | * ''VideoGame/TheWitcher'': Geralt of Rivia. If you stick with his True Neutrality at the end of the game, by necessity he becomes one-man-''two''-armies. |
| 560 | * B.J Blazkowicz in the ''VideoGame/{{Wolfenstein}}'' games combines this with BadassNormal, taking on huge forces of Nazis ([[StupidJetpackHitler occasionally ones]] [[{{Ghostapo}} with super-powers]]) all by himself. In ''VideoGame/WolfensteinTheNewOrder'', he takes on an entire U-boat, much to the shock of the captain: |
| 561 | -->''"What are you doing? Shoot him!"'' |
| 562 | -->''"[[LampshadeHanging He's only one man!]]"'' |
| 563 | -->''"[[BadBoss You're all useless!]]"'' |
| 564 | ** [[VideoGame/WolfensteinIITheNewColossus The sequel]] throws a heavy lampshade on this with a radio conversation in the opening battle. |
| 565 | --->'''Engel:''' <WHAT DOES IT MATTER? He is a trained killer! I guarantee he has obtained firearms by now. Possibly grenades too, how should I know?>\ |
| 566 | '''Commandant:''' <Affirmative, General. And how many men does Terror-Billy lead in his raid?>\ |
| 567 | '''Engel:''' <God in Heaven, are you stupid, man?! He's not leading anybody! ''He is by himself''!>\ |
| 568 | '''Commandant:''' <[[JustOneMan But one single man]], General... surely our security...>\ |
| 569 | '''Engel:''' <You ARE the security, you fucking imbecile!>\ |
| 570 | ''(B.J. cuts Mannheimer's legs off and slits his throat)''\ |
| 571 | '''Engel:''' <Commandant? Hello? Commandant Mannheimer? Do you read?! ...Shit!> |
| 572 | ** Also lampshaded later on when Blazkowicz is captured and paraded before a [[KangarooCourt Nazi show trial]], but he really did kill the thousands of people they say he killed. (They were all Nazis, though.) |
| 573 | * In a very rare RTS example, ''VideoGame/WorldInConflict'' can have this. An ordinary unit of 5 soldiers can take cover and fight ridiculously well against more enemies, with bad cover. One time while this player was playing Cascade Falls, a unit took cover in the ruins of a house and held off most of the Soviet army until [[spoiler:a [[NukeEm hydrogen bomb]] was dropped on the nearby town]]. |
| 574 | * There are several achievements for this in ''VideoGame/WorldOfTanks''. Most are, appropriately enough, considered Epic Medals. The Kolobanov's medal is given to any tank who is alone and outnumbered at least five to one at the end of the game and ''still'' wins. The Radley-Walters' and Pool's medals are awarded for destroying more enemy tanks than the rest of your team put together: 8-9 in the case of a Radley-Walters' and 10-13 in the case of a Pool's. The rarest and most impressive is the Raseiniai Heroes medal, which requires the player destroy pretty much ''everyone'' on the enemy team by themselves: 14 or 15 kills. Finally, there's the honorary King of the Hill award for being the last man standing on either team. Being a true one man army in ''World of Tanks'' requires the player receive simultaneous awards of the Kolobanov's Medal, Raseiniai Heroes medal, and the King of the Hill medal at the very least (by being the last surviving tank that kills everyone else). |
| 575 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'', Id is able to take on [[HumongousMecha Gears]] by himself. When he's in his own Gear, he destroys entire armies. |
| 576 | ** Not just armies. He destroys entire ''nations''. And it's alluded to several times that he ''wiped a continent off the map'' at some point before the start of the game. [[spoiler:You never actually beat Id...but that's because the main character eventually discovers that he ''is'' Id.]] |
| 577 | * Adol Christin from the ''VideoGame/{{Ys}}'' series storms impossibly well defended enemy fortresses at least once per game, not to mention [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu killing ancient evil forces]], alone and generally with little more than a [[WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer sword and armor]]. |
| 578 | * From ''VideoGame/ZoneOfTheEnders'', we have Leo Steinbuck and Dingo Egret, who between themselves and Jehuty destroy large numbers of BAHRAM's MechaMooks. Justified in that Jehuty '''is''' a SuperPrototype mech. |
| 579 | [[/folder]] |
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