What are your favourite health systems in games? Regular or regenerating health? Maybe hybrids of the two, such as regenerating shields but normal health, or partially regenerating health? Do you like separate HP for limbs? What games have good health systems? What games have shit ones? etc etc etc

Discuss!!!

Personally, I prefer normal health + medkits to regenerating health, but one of the best health systems I've seen in a game is the one in Far Cry 2. Your health is split into a couple of cells. If a cell doesn't empty, it will regenerate in time. If not, you have to use a healing item to get your health back up.

Limbs having separate health bars is pretty cool too. See Deus Ex and the new Fallout games. You die when you run out of all of your HP, but if any particular limb goes down to 0 HP, it will affect your combat-effectiveness (crippled legs cause you to move more slowly etc).

Deus Ex: Human Revolution as well as the recent Battlefield games have been the best examples of regenerating health I've seen. The regen is slow enough to not be exploitable and for health boosters to still be important.

I generally don't mind as long as it works, but one health system that I really dislike is the ''red jelly'' style health regen, in Metro 2033 or Battlefield for example, because you only have a vague idea of how much health you have left and in most games it regenerates far too quickly. If you're going to put in health regen at least give us a bar to go with it. That been said it's forgiveable in Metro as realism and lack of HUD was a big part of that game. Lack of a health bar is especially annoying in Bad Company 2 though, as your health never regenerates fully and there really was no reason not to include a bar.

At 10/8/11 05:37 PM, Jackho wrote: one health system that I really dislike is the ''red jelly'' style health regen, in Metro 2033 or Battlefield

...or Call of Duty. I don't know why I didn't think of that first.

Iron man's (the first game for the movie) health system was cool.You can strategically alter the limit of your health,and if you took a real bad hit,you have to do a QTE and have another battery to re-fill health completely.

Health systems that build themselves numerically, usually found in games like half life 2, left 4 dead, promote the most strategic gameplay, and I consider more realistic and enthralling than the mutant style, stop and go they have in place for a lot of fps games today.

It also offers many more ways to reward player exploration than the alternative as well.

Zelda's health system

/thread

At 10/8/11 05:13 PM, idiot-monarch wrote: Your health is split into a couple of cells. If a cell doesn't empty, it will regenerate in time. If not, you have to use a healing item to get your health back up.

That type's pretty neato. Off the top of my head I know the first Resistance and all the Killzone games do that apart from Far Cry 2.

40k: Space Marine and Halo CE have pretty good health systems too. Your shields regenerate, but under that, you have non-regenerating health that's very fragile.

No regen at all is best, though. It's a shame that the only recent shooters I can think of that still use that are Hard Reset and Resistance 3.

Halo : Combat Evolved had the best one.

Regenerating shield coupled with health that doesn't regenerate. A shield can take small damage, but you'll need medkits if you really get hurt. Pure genius, I wish this type of health system was implemented into more games instead of Bleeding out of the eyes then sitting behind cover for 3 seconds.

ODST and Reach Systems had plenty shield but very little health, I didn't like that.

I kinda like the normal kind when it doesn't regenerate automatically but you have to heal up in some way or another. Also nice if you can expand your maximum amount health as the game progresses. I'm also a sucker for HP systems. I love seeing huge numbers flying across the screen when I hit an enemy.

The auto-regen systems some games looks a bit lame to me as it kinda seems to promote camping / waiting around in some safe location until you're good to go again.

Say what you will. Resident Evil 4's health system is genius.

At 10/8/11 06:50 PM, Oliver wrote: Say what you will. Resident Evil 4's health system is genius.

Mixin 'erbs erry day.

I had about 10 Sprays when I finished, cos I only touched the herbs.

At 10/8/11 06:56 PM, phrozonfire wrote:

At 10/8/11 06:50 PM, Oliver wrote: Say what you will. Resident Evil 4's health system is genius.

Mixin 'erbs erry day.

I had about 10 Sprays when I finished, cos I only touched the herbs.

Smokin dat green all day errday

At 10/8/11 07:01 PM, Oliver wrote:

Smokin dat green all day errday

Can't tell if Addict or Oliver

At 10/8/11 07:07 PM, Snuff wrote:

At 10/8/11 07:01 PM, Oliver wrote:

Smokin dat green all day errday

Can't tell if Addict or Oliver

You're shit at Rock Band.

At 10/8/11 07:17 PM, Oliver wrote:

You're shit at Rock Band.

Dude I can't play after I start getting pissed off with it and my kit was falling to pieces, it has done now.

another good health system was Earthbound.
It was real time bleeding(I call it that)where if you get damaged (like for example,40 DMG)it would roll down but you still have a chance to "stop the bleeding"

I liked how in Super Mario 64's health system, coins would heal you. It was nice to know that money had the magical power of giving you life in Mario's world. Also, if you jumped in water, dove underneath, and came up to the top, you'd be instantly healed.

That was a great health system.

At 10/8/11 05:13 PM, idiot-monarch wrote:


Personally, I prefer normal health + medkits to regenerating health, but one of the best health systems I've seen in a game is the one in Far Cry 2. Your health is split into a couple of cells. If a cell doesn't empty, it will regenerate in time. If not, you have to use a healing item to get your health back up.

So like the resistance games.

Anyway, I quite like Metal gear solid 3 snake eater best. health bar, but if you get hurt or injured you can't regenerate a certain portion until its treated.

At 10/8/11 09:57 PM, ZJ wrote: I liked how in Super Mario 64's health system, coins would heal you. It was nice to know that money had the magical power of giving you life in Mario's world. Also, if you jumped in water, dove underneath, and came up to the top, you'd be instantly healed.

That was a great health system.

I always thought how weird that was.

I guess the regular health bar in Fallout 3 works very well with me I like to collect MEDI Kits, and such in games. The only game I played for far with regenerating health is the Saints Rows series and found that odd and kinda annoying. I would of thought I would have liked regenerating health more, but no having to wait for your health to get back up with no health bar showing sounds cool but I hated in in Fable 3

The absolute best health system I've seen is Fallout New Vegas on Hardcore mode, where you can take limb damage, which in turn can damage your effectiveness, and where healing items take a while to function, so using them in mid-combat doesn't magically rejuvenate you. Meanwhile, there's absolutely no regenerative health. Boy, you don't know how much I wish online FPS games would do this too. Diablo II was pretty good for this too, where you had healing items, but they still take a while to heal you.

I'm not a fan of regenerative health like Call of Duty. If you shoot someone a few times but they survive and get away, they should be stumbling around, not ducking behind cover until all those bullet wounds magically mend themselves. The first time I saw it was in Halo with it's shield system, which I thought would just be a one time thing that would never really catch on. I was really quite surprised such an unrealistic health system caught on so widely.

At 10/8/11 06:20 PM, Crink wrote: halo: combat evolved had my favorite health system ever. EVER.

I concur.

Get creative I don't care. I hate it when it's wolverine style though.

At 10/8/11 06:27 PM, ghdude85 wrote: Zelda's health system

BEEP BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP BEEP.

MAKE IT STOP!

*Hey Listen*

SHUT THE FUCK UP NAVI!

At 10/9/11 01:45 AM, Aci6 wrote: I couldn't imagine the NEW CoD games having health, it wouldn't go with their fast-pace

If anything, having health bars would speed up their pace.

All regenerating health does is slow down the pace of a game, really.

It really depends on the game to be honest.

At 10/8/11 06:23 PM, naronic wrote: Health systems that build themselves numerically, usually found in games like half life 2, left 4 dead, promote the most strategic gameplay, and I consider more realistic and enthralling than the mutant style, stop and go they have in place for a lot of fps games today.

It also offers many more ways to reward player exploration than the alternative as well.

Arguable. I think either offer breadth for strategy. Vegas in my experience has the best regen system.

At 10/8/11 08:12 PM, majormelthesackboy wrote: another good health system was Earthbound.
It was real time bleeding(I call it that)where if you get damaged (like for example,40 DMG)it would roll down but you still have a chance to "stop the bleeding"

Agreed. If you could be fast enough, you could save yourself while the health rolled down. People could people easily make uses for this.

The health system in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

I like the Borderlands system the best TBH. When your shield goes down, you start to lose health until you pass out and have to kill an enemy to get a second wind. Most of the time, it should give you enough reason why you shouldn't go charging head first into a group of brutes and big ass spiderants, but instead use some sort of strategy on how to beat them.

Also, unless you have a shield that can heal you, you need to use a health pack, pick up a health vial or use transfusion grenades to get back that health, which sometimes can be a pain to do, especially when you're going up against the Crimson Lance.