One is a linear 3D platform shooter with a dynamic camera that automatically shifts perspectives with the action. In lieu of power-ups, the player builds the "rage meter" by killing enemies. Building the rage meter increases their character's abilities, in some cases in ways that are necessary to advance through the levels. There are six levels in total with a boss at the end of each, most of whom cannot be dispatched by direct gunfire and instead must be defeated by usage of the surrounding environment.
Plot
The goal of One is for the player to discover the identity of the main characterJohn Cain. The only clue available is a barcode on the player-character's neck. At the beginning of the game, John Cain awakens on the floor of an apartment building, with a gun in place of one arm, no memory, and police helicopters shooting missiles through a window. Meanwhile, the player character is pursued across the city and country-side by military and police forces who are apparently intending to kill Cain, and have mistaken the player character for him. To combat the police and military forces and other enemies, the player has the option to use Cain's newly installed arm cannon, or rely on more traditional fighting weapons like punch and kicking combos.
Development
Visual Concepts president Greg Thomas stated, "The whole idea behind this game was to take the kind of hard-hitting fast pace you used to see in side-scrollingplatform games and translate those values into a 3D game." The game uses asynchronous loading, a common PlayStation technique which makes the game load data into the console's RAM during play, thus preventing the game from having to pause for load times.
Reception
Shawn Smith of Electronic Gaming Monthly selected One as his pick for "Sleeper Hit of the Holidays", praising the originality of mechanics such as the rage meter and saying the game "brings back some of the feel of the Super NESContra games - and does it well on a 32-bit machine to boot." Next Generation reviewed the PlayStation version of the game, rating it two stars out of five, and stated that "One had a lot of promise. If only ASC could've gotten the graphics and the control in sync. But then that's the trick, isn't it?"
