What happened to health meters?
- Thread starter retyopy
- Start date
On the contrary, I've noticed they've kind of come back a bit.
I don't think they've fallen out of popularity, per se. I think the reason they went away was because developers wanted to 'add realism' to their games my making a HUD less prevalent. It's been done badly (Kane & Lynch 2, Homefront, Turok, etc.), I don't think it's been done particularly well, but Dead Space did a good job of merging a HUD (health bar included) with a character's perspective display.
And they became less prevalent in major releases around the FPS boom with Halo & Modern Warfare.
I don't think they've fallen out of popularity, per se. I think the reason they went away was because developers wanted to 'add realism' to their games my making a HUD less prevalent. It's been done badly (Kane & Lynch 2, Homefront, Turok, etc.), I don't think it's been done particularly well, but Dead Space did a good job of merging a HUD (health bar included) with a character's perspective display.
And they became less prevalent in major releases around the FPS boom with Halo & Modern Warfare.
programmers got tired of people complaining that the Medkits are too far apart. keep em too close together, make the game too easy.
Regenerative health is 'cool' apparently. Valve has kept health meters in its recent FPS titles though.
Uhm there's enough games these days that do have a healthe meter. Deus Ex Human Revolution, Skyrim will probably have one, Mass Effect 3. Space Marine is a TPS at heart so it follow most of the controls, from sprinting to dodging to no health meter. Don't assume every game has to have a health meter.
Nintendo games still have traditional health meters, sometimes not visible, but still existent nonetheless.
maybe that's why there are no health meters anymore. we gotta make our games simpler for our players.
It still has a regenerating health meter for the medic (but it is justified). however, i simply think that a regenerating health meter in valve games would make it too easy...martin said:
maybe that's why there are no health meters anymore. we gotta make our games simpler for our players.
I thought the lack of a health meter in InFamous was well done. Each hit splashes blood in Cole's face as he gets more and more wounded. And when he's near death his vision starts to fade, and he can hear his heart struggling to keep him alive. So he finds a quiet spot to wipe himself off and let his electro-super-charged healing ability repair the damage and he's right as rain, ready to rain down lightning on some more psychic hobos.
