If you play a game you will get hurt. This is true even in video games, although it's only your digital incarnation that gets wounded fatally. It's no big deal though because whenever you do get hit, all you have to do is hide behind an object and all your wounds are magically healed. But it wasn't always like this. There was a time when you actually had to work to gain health in a video game. There were several items at your disposal such as med kits, healing potions etc. That changed however in the year 2001 as this was the year that saw the release of a shooter called Halo. This game rewrote a lot of the rules for the first person shooter genre. Mechanics that we take for granted such as the two weapon limit, a hot button for grenades and the melee attack all owe their existence to this game. It also introduced a feature that would make video games more accessible to the casual gamer; it is called the regenerating health meter. Technically Halo did not introduce the regenerating health. In order to restore health we would still have to rely on traditional med packs but it cut us a break by equipping the master chief's power armour with regenerating shields. What was unique about the game was that just like Half-Life before it, Halo attempted to explain the reason as to how the protagonist is able to take so much punishment. Nowadays almost every game incorporates the regenerating health gauge, but is this actually a sign of laziness? I can understand how the Master Chief's power armour or Gordon Freeman's hazard suit are able to protect the user from serious injuries, but how do the protagonists of the Modern Warfare and Black Ops series survive an explosion not 5 feet away? Perhaps that was a bad example after all those games aren't about exploring a world they are more about escorting you from one mind-blowing set piece to another. A better (though not ideal) example would be a game like Skyrim. It is not a game that requires regenerating health there are already several healing items that can be used such as spells, potions and even food, also the game conveniently pauses allowing you to calmly select your healing item.
Yeah it breaks the illusion but it isn't as jarring as regenerating health. It's a relatively minor point but sometimes having a healing item in your game can really sell the realism of the its universe. For instance the healing potions in Thief really fit the fantasy setting its as if the people might actually use it to heal themselves in that time, how about in System Shock 2 where you're required to consume food, drinks and hypo sprays to heal yourself. Similarly a lot of creative ideas can be introduced if only a little thought is put into it. If you insist on using regenerating health you could follow the path of Deus Ex Human Revolution or Crysis explaining why you regenerate health over time. You could also try something different like in Max Payne. It's possible that the health meter at the bottom left corner is not a health meter at all, it's probably a pain meter and Max consumes painkillers not to heal himself but to ignore the pain. It would have been more effective if they would have shown us a scene where max treats his own wounds but I can use my imagination to fill in some of these plot holes however they are way too big in games like Call Of Duty, Battlefield, Splinter Cell, etc. for me to cover up.
I can understand that it must be pretty hard to come up with a reasonable method to regain health especially in a modern setting it would have been rather silly to use a heath potion to recover health in Battlefield 3 but may be it could have used something like in Left 4 Dead series where it takes a few seconds to recover health from med packs and painkillers can put the pain aside for a few moments that's kind of clever. You can even see the character applying the bandages to the wounds. This may seem like a trivial point to most people but it must be addressed. Aside froma select few, there aren't a lot of unique hardcore games out there. We have seen regenerating health in games for about a decade now and nothing seems to challenge it and as we know stalemate can lead to extinction. Once upon a time Gears Of War was the definitive cover based third person shooter and now Spec Ops The Line that followed the template almost exactly, is considered an average game. Using a better example the modern warfare series are now considered generic despite having great set pieces, so much so, that I am not as excited about black ops 2 as some of the others are.
In my opinion the 90s revolutionized a lot of mechanics in games perhaps that decade was filled with people that wanted to do something creative. But has the gaming industry now become a shell of its former self? Blindly following the templates set in the early 2000s to this day? Is it now rat race that cares nothing for fans but only for money? No, I certainly hope not. There are still developers out there that challenge this fad. Arguably the best example is valve software they have never used the regenerating health in their games till this day and I'm sure they wont do it in half life 3. Even Ubisoft appeared to be on the right track with Assassin's creed 2 where you actually had to go to a doctor to heal your wounds (although you did have medicine that healed you for the sake of game play). Hopefully this will continue in Assassin's Creed 3. They even take it a step further by forbidding you to heal yourself in the middle of combat. Bioware also appeared to wise up for Mass Effect 3 by dividing your health bar into five parts and if a portion is drained completely, it does not regenerate making the medigel useful for a change. It is quite similar to Crytek's Far Cry 2. That said I am not skeptical, this mechanic does have some advantages, as mentioned before it makes games more accessible widening the gaming audience and barely surviving a fight is no longer a death sentence, but it also means that your chances to improve your skills with the game are reduced dramatically because in most games the best tactic is to find a sweet spot and dig in but some games make you run by having the enemy toss a grenade at your feet that health regen ability will not help you there. All in all it is a clever mechanic when it is explained when it's not, it feels that the developers don't really care about their game's universe as much as they should. May be in a few years we will see a new trailblazing mechanic to manage health.
Log in to comment