What are you playing at the moment?

[Casimir Effect]

The Halo games brought regenerating health and the two-weapon limit. The latter is traceable to gamepad restrictions and is a little annoying, but undeniably presented a new level of choice to FPS games. The former is strangely divisive, as the people who claim regenerating health is unrealistic seem to fail to notice how unrealistic it is to have magical bandages placed round a map which cure bullet wounds. Both are silly, both are necessary, both lead to different kinds of fun. Regenerating health means every firefight can be treated as a distinct entity where all players are on an even keel aside from their possible weapon loadout. Health packs require more balancing or more nonlinear levels where exploration is encouraged. Both have merits, but personally I prefer the combination of both as per Halo 1 or FarCry 2.
For me, health packs were always made more ridiculous by the fact you couldn't take them with you to use later. Vietcong allowed you to always have 1 health pack to use if you couldn't reach your medic, this was a pretty damn good way of doing things but still, why only one health pack?

Halo games will always be better than the dreaded Modern Military Shooter in my eyes at least.

[DaftPunk]

In Fear,you could have more then 5 medkits in your "inventory".



Also,this:

[TheXand]

The Halo games brought regenerating health and the two-weapon limit. The latter is traceable to gamepad restrictions and is a little annoying, but undeniably presented a new level of choice to FPS games. The former is strangely divisive, as the people who claim regenerating health is unrealistic seem to fail to notice how unrealistic it is to have magical bandages placed round a map which cure bullet wounds. Both are silly, both are necessary, both lead to different kinds of fun. Regenerating health means every firefight can be treated as a distinct entity where all players are on an even keel aside from their possible weapon loadout. Health packs require more balancing or more nonlinear levels where exploration is encouraged. Both have merits, but personally I prefer the combination of both as per Halo 1 or FarCry 2.
For me, health packs were always made more ridiculous by the fact you couldn't take them with you to use later. Vietcong allowed you to always have 1 health pack to use if you couldn't reach your medic, this was a pretty damn good way of doing things but still, why only one health pack?

Halo games will always be better than the dreaded Modern Military Shooter in my eyes at least.

I've been playing first person shooters since the original Medal of Honour so I'm no stranger to medpacks, but to my mind the regenerating health bar was the next stage of evolution for the genre. Medpacks would seem like such a backwards step after the brilliance of Call of Duty 2. It's just such a superior system. Is it unrealistic? Yeah, sure, but the medpack system was just as bad if not worse since not only were you soaking up similarly urnealistic amounts of bullets you were magically healing said bullet wounds in seconds flat rather than spending months recuperating in a field hospital.

[Casimir Effect]

I've been playing first person shooters since the original Medal of Honour so I'm no stranger to medpacks, but to my mind the regenerating health bar was the next stage of evolution for the genre. Medpacks would seem like such a backwards step after the brilliance of Call of Duty 2. It's just such a superior system. Is it unrealistic? Yeah, sure, but the medpack system was just as bad if not worse since not only were you soaking up similarly urnealistic amounts of bullets you were magically healing said bullet wounds in seconds flat rather than spending months recuperating in a field hospital.

Thanks, I love you.

[DaftPunk]

Regen is so noob.

[Fumarole]

Both are silly, both are necessary, both lead to different kinds of fun.

Why are both necessary? Games like SWAT and Rainbow Six do just fine without them.

[Kaira-]

I've been dabbling in Dominions 3. The UI is... archaic and little cryptic to say, and the graphic options don't seem to support widescreen resolutions, but nonetheless I've been enjoying myself. I've barely scratched the surface, but already the insane tactical depth within is shining through.

[DaftPunk]

Why are both necessary? Games like SWAT and Rainbow Six do just fine without them.

Thank you! Regen is for noobs,admit it.

[AlexClockwork]

Actually, I remember the first Call of Duty being amazing in the hardest difficulty setting, and it was quite realistic, regarding health. I'd like to play it again. >.<

[DaftPunk]

I remember COD online without regen,it was blast. Then COD 2 came..buuu.

[Casimir Effect]

Why are both necessary? Games like SWAT and Rainbow Six do just fine without them.

And they had comparatively tiny player bases. It's good that there are games out there which cater to people who want ultra-realism, but suggesting that should be the only option is not a good thing, as sales figures demonstrate.
And hey, it's very simple to emulate that sort of gameplay: voluntarily eschew healthpacks and complete the level with one health bar; or keep a running tally in your head of how much damage you've taken and quit whenever you figure you should have died to stop that evil regeneration happening. Now doesn't that sound like fun?

[Thelastmccabe]

I've been playing Nehrim, a so far great total conversion mod for Oblivion although I'm not very far into it yet. Also been trying out sins of a solar empire trinity which seems quite good and about to fire up Zeus: master of Olympus, my first try at one of the sierra city building games. Later I'm going to play torchlight 2 with my brother, having finally convinced him to pick it up.

I've probably been playing ys seven for my psp more than anything else though.

[The JG Man]

There's been a variety of ways implementing health over the years and I don't really think any one is best. It absolutely depends on the type of feel you're going for. If I were to pick one though, I like the combined system where you have part regeneration and part stock health. A few games even do that differently. I really liked the way it was done in Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, whereby you had chunks of health and if you emerged from a fight with some damage, but the chunk not fully depleted, it would regen up to the top of that chunk. I like systems like this as it doesn't penalise you for making a mistake, but you do have to live with the consequences of it. I also think it maintains adaptive gameplay, where you must look for every option if you want to survive as best as possible

Then you also have to think about multiplayer specifically. I don't think regen health works in Battlefield or kit based games whereby you have someone dedicated to healing. It's why I loathed its continuing presence in BF3, not just for infantry, but for bloody vehicles too! You can see a divide elsewhere, when you consider that the COD arena style of play only has regen health because it doesn't have health packs, whilst in UT/Quake you picked up health and armour but obviously don't have regen. It's an odd one. I tend to prefer games, in general, not to have regenerating health, but I think you can definitely implement it well, where you don't feel like it's a crutch of the gameplay.

[hamster]

Regen health shouldn't encourage people from hiding behind cover DURING a fight for health recovery. Also not very internally consistent. Would prefer it if health doesn't regen when someone is shooting near you but only recovers when doing some kind of healing action i.e. digging bullets out of yourself in Far Cry 2.

[Mohorovicic]

Guys. We did that. We did that like, two weeks ago.

[coldvvvave]

Degenerating health is the next step of evolution.

[Fanbuoy]

Degenerating health is the next step of evolution.

Have any games done this? Like like using it as a time limit? "Get to a first aid kit before you bleed out" or something similar.

[qizarate]

Have any games done this? Like like using it as a time limit? "Get to a first aid kit before you bleed out" or something similar.

Metroid Prime 2 had a mechanic whereby in the 'dark world', any time spent outside of small luminiscent bubbles resulted in degenerating health. Admittedly, it would regenerate once inside the bubble. In fact, it strikes me that degenerating health is actually an incredibly common mechanic, but it's usually used context-dependently - for example while underwater.

[Malawi Frontier Guard]

Bomber King/Robowarrior had a degenerating health bar in 1987. Hope that helps.

[Lukasz]

Have any games done this? Like like using it as a time limit? "Get to a first aid kit before you bleed out" or something similar.

In a way FTL does that. You bleed life till you get to save spot aka the shop.