By: John Doe
"Better to be pissed off, than..."
John Cain is one pissed off guy. He awakes in his apartment to find that one of his arms has been replaced with a powerful weapon. Don’t you just love stupid villains? I mean, if you wanna handicap your enemy, for Chrissakes you take both of his arms off and replace them with plungers or pencils or something. You don’t put an extremely powerful gun on him! Anyway, John is in a world of hurt with helicopters and soldiers firing on him, so he takes off with vengeance on his mind. One thing the bad guys didn’t count on was John’s ancestor relationship with Bill Bixby...you see, the more John gets angry, the stronger he gets, and if he forgot to mention it, you won’t like him when he’s angry.
Well that’s the premise of One. You against impossible odds. And thanks to the innovative Rage meter, which increases your firepower and strength the longer you go without dying, you just might have a chance.
One takes place over several futuristic 3D levels with the emphasis on action rather than exploration. This game is what a 3D Contra should have been like. However, thanks to some ridiculously difficult platform jumps, all the while trying to avoid gunfire and falling to your death, you’ll need a Rage meter of your own. Yes, this game is unfair. The programmers might say challenging.... but we know better. But there is light a the end of the tunnel; I liked this game enough to persevere and once you get used to the high difficulty it’s really not that bad at all. The rooftop city level is really the only place that you will run into this problem.
There aren’t a lot of games like One on the market. In fact I’m trying to think of a couple and I am having difficulty...hmmmm....I guess the 3D Contra game Legacy of War wins, but I found One, much more enjoyable to play.
The camera is non-controllable and sometimes you get into some tight spots. But that could be said of all 3D games at this point. Usually the camera stays behind you (or along side you when the level perspective changes) and it does a good job. Sometimes your big warrior turns into a little man when the camera pulls back too far. It almost feels like playing Robotron when the game does this. Luckily it doesn’t ever last too long.
The pyrotechnics in this game are great. Everything blows up real good. The frame rate is decent enough but sometimes things slow down when there is a lot of stuff on screen. The levels are dark and atmospheric/futuristic which compliment the theme nicely. There is one daytime canyon level which almost seems out of place, in relation to the rest of the game. It’s like the old Batman tv show where Batman ran around in the day time! You’re supposed to be a bat for gods’ sake. Come back at 10 pm! ....Well, now I’m nicely off topic. Let’s see..... oh yeah.
The stock PlayStation controller worked fine for this game. I’m not sure if the game is analog compatible but I’m not convinced it would make much difference. I say this because, sometimes it feels more like a 2 1/2 D game along the lines of Pandemonium. That is if Pandemonium let you fall off the sides of the platform you were running on.
You could do a lot worse than having this game in your collection. I don’t own it, but I will if I ever find it. Used that is. Yes, it has it’s drawbacks, but they can be overlooked, and should be if you are a shooter fan. If you are planning to use the cheats for this game then I’d suggest a couple of nights rental rather than a purchase. The cheats make the game way too easy. A good solid first effort, that is not without it’s brilliance nor it’s shortcomings. I’ll be on the lookout for the sequel if there is one. Geez, I wonder what they’ll call it....
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Final Analysis: