Any many-vs.-one video games?

The Game Room
1

Back in the Old Days, most video games, if they involved a conflict of some sort, were a conflict of One vs. Many. The player controlled a single character, pitted that character against vast armies, and through superior firepower, greater endurance, or the armies being idiotic, prevailed against all of them. Everything from Super Mario Brothers to Doom fit into this model.

Then, we started to see games of One vs. One. The player still had control of a single character, but there was only one opponent, who had comparable abilities to the player’s character. Examples included Street Fighter, Punchout, and deathmatch mode in FPSs.

A little after that, the RTS genre appeared, and we had Many vs. Many. The enemy had a vast army, but so did the player. Any one member of either army was relatively insignificant, but the armies as a whole would vie against each other, and wear each other down. Some turn-based strategy games fall into this category, too, like Civilization.

There have been minor variations on these three themes, for instance including Few instead of Many or One (such as many RPGs). But there’s one obvious combination for which I can’t think of any examples. Are there any video games that are Many vs. One? The closest I can think of is that some RTS missions end with a boss battle… but even there, the boss usually fights by pitting its armies against you, and we’re right back to Many vs. Many. That, or it’s a mission where you only control a single heroic character, and we’re back to One vs. One.

So, is there any video game out there where the player controls a vast army, in order to defeat one singular opponent?

2

Most JRPGs have a party fighting, potentially, single enemies.

Do MMOs with boss battles count?

There’s that new Bigfoot hunting game that’s popular with streamers about now.

3

JRPG boss fights are few-vs.-one, not many-vs.-one. A typical party size is, what, 4-6? That’s a far cry from “an army”. And even if there are some boss fights, by the end of the game you’ll have killed thousands of cannon fodder, which is definitely Many.

And in an MMO, even though there might be enough combatants to make up an army, each player is only controlling one of them. That’s sort of getting away from what I had in mind.

I don’t know the Bigfoot game.

4

The one that comes to my mind is Ogre, a game that I haven’t played for perhaps 30 years. It was based on the Steve Jackson board game of the 1970s, and you controlled an army (howitzers, vehicles, and infantry) with the goal of destroying the Ogre, a futuristic cybertank juggernaut, before it destroyed your base.

Looks like they’re re-making it too:

5

I think the problem is with the “many” in the first place. Other than RTS, I can’t think of any genres where you would control “many”. This is further complicated by the fact that you can’t use a first person view for “many”, or really any control scheme other than a RTS control scheme, and it’s hard to have the player identify with the “many”, and you end up with no games that feature many vs one. Also, controlling “many” is a multitasking skill test that is not as favoured in the present, developers are generally moving away from “micro” as a skill test.

Well, I can think of a board game that featured many vs one, Ogre. And I suppose there must have been a video game adaptation of that, but I don’t know of it.

EDIT: SNIPED!

6

Yup, that would definitely count. I assume that, being based on a tabletop game, it’s turn-based?

7

I think that would be a difficult game to design because it would get boring unless the singular bad guy had some sort of minions which ends up turning the game to Many vs. Many with a Many vs. One end game which is in fact how many games work now.

8

It sounds like you’re describing Dynasty Warriors to a T.

Basically just you facing (literally) thousands of enemies at once.

9

Not 1 vs an army; the closest I can think of is a couple of current or in-beta asymmetrical PVP games that are 1 vs 4+: Dead By Daylight and Friday the 13th.

Dead by Daylight is 1 vs up to 4, everyone is trapped inside a large, enclosed outdoor compound; survivors must repair a certain number of generators (# of survivors + 1) to open the doors to escape, while the killer must find, capture, and sacrifice at least one survivor to get a win. There are 7 different survivors (infinitely more with mods) and 5 different killers (6 with DLC, including The Shape, i.e. Michael Myers!), and a level-up system with perks. In this game the killers move faster than the players can run, but the levels are full of hiding places, barricades, and things to run around, and the players have unlimited stamina to run; the killers are much slower at certain things like climbing through windows or over obstacles, and they cannot strike twice quickly (there’s a 2-second cooldown whenever a player is successfully struck). Overall the game is balanced pretty well between the killer and the survivors.

Friday the 13th is 1 vs up to 7(?), and everyone is trapped at Camp Crystal Lake; survivors must repair the phone line and call the police, radio for help, and/or repair 1 of 2 cars, and no matter what else, reach the road out to escape, while the killer must simply find and murder everyone before they can escape or 20 minutes have passed. As Jason you have several special powers, including the ability to teleport anywhere on the map. In this game the survivors can run much faster than Jason, but have limited stamina; if you cannot shake Jason before your stamina runs out you’re screwed (if you have a certain item you can escape him). This game is less balanced than DbD, but with 5-6 survivors there are enough players to split the killer’s attention and the map is quite large so usually at least someone escapes.

10

That’s the opposite of the OP’s request. He wants to control a legion fighting a singular powerful opponent.

11

Borderlands 2 is 1 to 4 players against both mooks and bosses.

12

Wait, I’m supposed to read the OP BEFORE writing my opinion?

What kind of place is this?

(aka…oops! my bad!)

13

I think Dungeon Keeper and games of that genre would qualify. It was the reverse of the typical fantasy dungeon crawler. You were the evil overlord and controlled a horde of minions in the dungeon you build, against adventurers. If I remember right there were powerful heroes that would take a large army of minions to bring down.

14

I’ve recently been playing Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege (a pretty new game) and there is a mode called “lone wolf” where it’s you alone versus 20 or so terrorists at a time. I prefer it over the multiplayer mode.

edited to add: Don’t worry, Sir T-Cups, I made the same error. Ah well.

15

I’ve never played one, but I’m under the impression that MMOs qualify: they usually have missions where a couple dozen players team up in order to kill a single boss character. There might be mooks along the way, or a few thrown in as part of the boss fight, but I think they’re mostly a many vs one scenario.

16

It’s not an army vs 1, but there’s Evolve and Evolve Stage 2. It’s 4 vs 1. Four human alien hunters of different classes vs an alien. The alien starts off weak and has to evade and hide while it grows more powerful, if the hunters don’t catch the alien in time he turns into an unstoppable beast that basically swats them all like flies.

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/evolve-ps4/

17

Some classes/builds in Diablo-like games end up in many vs. one fights during some boss fights - eg. in Path of Exile a zombie-focused witch could easily have a dozen or more minions on the field at once. These games don’t usually give the player a whole lot of control of the minions, though.

18

Yes, a “raid” in an MMO can have 40 or more players fighting a single massive enemy I’m a long, drawn-out combat with multiple stages and challenges (dodge the fireballs flying around, stop attacking the boss temporarily or the damage is reflected, etc.). That’s probably going to be the only valid example of what the OP is looking for.

19

There’s a recent multiplayer game out there, I forget the name, where one player controls a superpowered dinosaur beast while every other player is a frail human hunter.

There’s also *Overlord *: technically you just play the titular character but if you try to do everything on your own you’ll get wrecked, plus there are numerous puzzles that the Overlord can’t even reach. So instead you rely on up to 80 little gremlins to do all that for you, supporting them from the rear with spells and maybe the errant mace strike.

20

TV Tropes agrees with this, specifically citing the Overlord games.