Absence of a health bar

[l1il]

Seeing the Metro 2033 re-review (lol), this made me think of the health bar in FPS,

 

     The health bar is loosing it's place in shooters. This changes the whole thing. In CoD, by default, there is none. The character heals itself. In Battlefield it is the same, but in MP you can (or could, last one I played was BFBC2) select hardcore mode where you can only receive one or two shell in your body.

I used to play Unreal (first to third, the tournament 20xx not so much), Fear (first, SP and MP), Deus Ex, Quake IV, Doom 3... But I tried more recent games, and I just don't like it. Wolfenstein NWO got it back after they removed it in Wolf 2009 version.

 

I, personally, have a very strong opinion for this topic.

 

I want to know yours!

 

 

Edited June 18, 2014 by StefenHeif

[Waco]

Auto healing over time pretty much ruins any survival shooter.

[Guest_Jim_*]

Is it really a 're-review' if we haven't reviewed it before?

 

Anyway, in my opinion it depends. Definitely survival FPSes, like the Metro franchise, make sense to not have it. I can mostly take it or leave it with non-survival games, but it is situational. For example, it makes sense to have it with Wolfenstein: The New Order as there are collectibles to increase the amount. Without a health bar, those collectibles wouldn't make much sense. Plus the overcharge functionality would again not make sense without the health bar.

Also Killing Floor, even though it is survival, I can forgive it having a health bar because of the ability to heal people in multiplayer. It's nice to know who needs it, and for that function, I'm good with it being there. Now if there could be another visual cue for approximate health in Killing Floor, that other players can see and thus replace the health bars, that would be great, at least as a function.

 

As far as regeneration in survival games, I do like it when you regenerate some, but not necessarily to full health. (What? I want to conserve med packs as much as I can and get away from the pulsing red borders.) A stripe system like New Order, even if hidden, would be nice so that you can recover some outside of fights, but still need to do something to get back to full health.

[IVIYTH0S]

It's situational, I thought I'd miss it but I've found myself playing the hardest difficulties anymore any they usually don't have crosshairs or HUDs enabled when you do (Metro, Deus Ex HR sorta) and I've come to really like it. But in Dishonored I didn't really like the game any less because it had the health bar.

[DanTheGamer11]

Err dependent on the situation, in MP games I think it's important to see if you can risk moving/shooting back or if you'll get ohk... in SP again it depends on the type of game, for RPGs etc I think it's important(at least in the RPGs I played). I find the bloodied screen effect very annoying in most if not all games I played because it's annoying and it doesn't provide accurate feedback unless you learn the hard way, would much prefer a health bar(doesn't even need values) and sound feedback. I'm currently playing through Deus Ex Human Revolution and am liking the health system. For more surivival/non technological player characters I think it wouldn't hurt having an image of a body and showing damage/pain to show damage etc

[Black64]

Auto healing over time pretty much ruins any survival shooter.

This 

 

I don't feel a heath bar is all that useful anyway. A heath bar is, to me, just a vague indication how much heath I do have. For it to be useful,  I would need to know how much damage each attack I sustain, as well as how fast I can heal (in numbers of course), it doesn't give me much usable info to make a confident decision. I like having hints (red splash on the sides of the screen), but I can always do without the heath bar. I like knowing, or should I say not knowing when I could die or how much damage I could take. It makes the player think anything could happen and to be less concerned about stats and more about the action.

[l1il]

-Guest_Jim   oops, I saw so many Metro 2033 (benches and gameplay) that I thought OCC already covered it. I like the fact that the reviewers here are giving an objective opinion first, and then get into subjective mode. In this case, we can compare oulselves to him (or her) and see what we have in common or not.

 

-Waco   This is a bit what I want to get at. You don't have as much stress if you just got to wait for your health to replenish. Try to get a health pack in a room where there can be anything hostile, that you HAVE to move to heal yourself. In Wolf 2009, it stopped me right in my tracks as the other characters repeated themselves (quick, we have to take the station down) while I was waiting to get my health back. You could wait as long as you wished, it did not matter in the end.

 

I am too attached to old games I think. If anyone played Delta Force and enjoyed it, that is the type of game that I like. Take note that there is no health bar tho.