What happened to health meters?
- Thread starter retyopy
- Start date
Generally the big reason the regenerating health thing caught on is because it was better.
For both players and developers.
It gave dev's the ability to create challenging encounters with enemies better by having a good frame of how difficult a challenge would be based on the player's health while it takes a lot of the tediousness out of a game and eliminates a lot of the bullshit of being stuck on low health and the backtracking or walking in circles to find that med-pack.
The game that does it best IMO is Halo, particularly CE with it's shield bar that gives the devs and players something consistent and the health bar to add more tension without it being frustrating.
For both players and developers.
It gave dev's the ability to create challenging encounters with enemies better by having a good frame of how difficult a challenge would be based on the player's health while it takes a lot of the tediousness out of a game and eliminates a lot of the bullshit of being stuck on low health and the backtracking or walking in circles to find that med-pack.
The game that does it best IMO is Halo, particularly CE with it's shield bar that gives the devs and players something consistent and the health bar to add more tension without it being frustrating.
Two reasons. One was realism (ah yes, because bullet wounds go away on their own if you just sit behind cover for a couple of seconds), but the actual gameplay reason was so that you could never get stuck at any point in the game.
Take Half-Life 2 for example. Admittedly it is one of the better games, with excellent level design as far as this goes, but I once watched a cousin of mine playing and the game auto-saved at a point nowhere near any medkits (or what's the Half-Life equivalent again?). Anyway with only 15 hp left, it took him at least 10 tries of trial and error to get through the next corridor and when you just want to get to your next objective, that's not a lot of fun.
Take Half-Life 2 for example. Admittedly it is one of the better games, with excellent level design as far as this goes, but I once watched a cousin of mine playing and the game auto-saved at a point nowhere near any medkits (or what's the Half-Life equivalent again?). Anyway with only 15 hp left, it took him at least 10 tries of trial and error to get through the next corridor and when you just want to get to your next objective, that's not a lot of fun.
Games are so simple now; you don't need one. Instead, the game kills off some of your units just to make it look cooler, but really, it doesn't have to. You'll win anyway.
See?
See?
No, you shouldn't have. You should use whatever style you're comfortable with.hardRAWKR said:
And I think that in this case your message was clear enough not to count as an error, as it is definitely doesn't bear any linguistic implication. (You shouldn't have used a comma between "them" and "it's" though [just saying...]).
I think it's because people think it detracts from immersion. Lot's of HUD elements take up screen space and regenerating health gets around this and a few other difficulties.
However Dead Space shows you can have all the hud elements in-game without breaking immersion. Love the way those games do the health bar.
However Dead Space shows you can have all the hud elements in-game without breaking immersion. Love the way those games do the health bar.
Realism in video games ... Interesting aspect. We began with Health Tonics in RPGs and flying crosses in Quake shooters .. See where we ended up now? I call that progress.
Neither Health Bars, nor regeneration is realistic, but, let's be honest, the latter gives a more streamlined gameplay.
Therefore we need to look forward and find a new solution, something that combines the streamlined experience AND realism.
Neither Health Bars, nor regeneration is realistic, but, let's be honest, the latter gives a more streamlined gameplay.
Therefore we need to look forward and find a new solution, something that combines the streamlined experience AND realism.
Because all the health meters expired and the health meter maids gave everyone a fine.
Clearly I have no sensible input to this discussion.
Clearly I have no sensible input to this discussion.
Playing Half Life 1 for the the first time last year pretty much won me over to regenerating health for exactly this reason. I still like the old system in games like Doom, but that's almost in a different genre nowadays - with its easy to dodge enemy projectiles and innumerable power ups (health, ammo, armor) Doom really plays closer to an 80s side scroller or Space Invaders than it does to a modern day FPS.Farther than stars said:
Resistance: Fall of Man, and the upcoming Resistance 3 for ps3 both use health bars, and health pick upsretyopy said: