@FPS Players: Preferred Health System

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I'd like to know what FPS players like when it comes to restoring one's health. I've noticed that a lot of the more recent shooters have done away with medkits, and use regenerating health instead. While it means you have to keep taking cover whenever your health gets too low, you no longer have to go back and search the level for health items.

Medal of Honor: Airborne and a few other games used a combination of the two... the health bar was split into 4 quarters... while each quarter could regenerate, you'd have to find a medkit if the quarter was depleted entirely.

So which do you prefer?

I like the split between the two is better
with regenerating health is kind of cheating, and with medkits you have to look all over the level for a new one unless you used them all then your screwed

I much prefer the regenerative health, trudging around for medkits is boring and if you used up all of the medkits you're SOL. Regenerative health also promotes the smart use of cover and the game feels more tactical.

In the Conflict series of games you can carry medkits and stock up on them, which was nice, but the Conflict games were pretty crude. Still fun, but not on par with Halo, Rainbow Six, SOCOM, Call of Duty, etc.

One thing that would annoy me is if I had to rely solely on a medic to get health throughout the game. A medic is basically a walking medkit who nags you and you have to babysit them, or else he dies and you're screwed once you're low on health. It's been a while since I've played Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, so I don't remember whether it had regular pickup medkits or not, but I remember the medic thing was one of the reasons why I never finished the game.

I prefer the regenerartion because it ended years of have to do a level all over again because you had most of your health but used a medkit to bring you to full health then get into a gunfight and you lose alot of health and while you looking for health you get killed by a straggler that you forgot to kill then you have start the level all over again. Especially in no one lives forever on ps2 because their was no quicksave.

I'm sick of progressive health systems. They pretty much absolve you of responsibility for your actions. Props to F.E.A.R. for bringing the old style back.

There was something blissfully intense about playing old games when you're trying to keep going for just a little bit longer. You never know when you're going to turn a corner and stair down the barrel of an SS's machine gun, or get eviscerated by a fiend. Modern fps's are all about linearity and tactics. No one appreciates good, imersive level design that gives you something more than simply combat to look forward to, and I think the decline of the med-kit system has contributed to this by ditching the incentive to actually make the level more than a very elaborate corridor.

Of course with all the cheep shots and snipers running around in modern FPS's, progressive health pretty much necessary

Yeah, it's really annoying when a game has few or no checkpoints and won't allow you to save. It's like, "Dammit, I shouldn't have to do all that sh** over for the millionth time just because of one lousy enemy." This is what I hated the most about MOH: European Assault, especially in the later levels... man, that game was disappointing...


Apparently, the people who made Crysis had the incentive, and that game had regenerative health. But you're right, FPS's do tend to be more linear these days. However, I don't think the exclusion of health items was due to linearity, but due to making it so that players wouldn't feel compelled to go back to places they'd ALREADY BEEN to get healed. With numerous item caches, or portable medkits (like in F.E.A.R.), this can be eliminated somewhat, though not always. Nevertheless, even in games with regenerative health, I still find myself going back and forth just to get ammo, so it doesn't really work in my case. But I'm rather noncommittal about it. Besides, I don't like being rushed through a level too fast... I like having time to explore.