Games where your health only regenerates on death?

[Legend]

Why are these so rare?

Like in multiplayer shooters, wouldn't it be a perfectly cool mechanic if you couldn't heal? It'd completely switch the dynamic and make things more tactical.

Or like in Dark souls if there were no estus flasks. The whole game would need to be balanced around this but campfires would be the only way to recover health.

[kitler53]

weird that you call out dark souls.    it's one of the last remaining franchises that doesn't have regenerative health.  yes there are flasks but they are limited.   fundamentally you still just have 1 large health bar that doesn't regen until you hit the next camp fire.

...but anyways.    halo happened if i remember my video game history well enough.

in general i think i prefer regen health.  but i agree,.. health that doesn't regen can be fun in the right sort of game.   i think my cripe about games without regen health is too many of them don't do it well enough.

like in GoW health didn't regen unless you died but if you died there was always a checkpoint just inches behind where ever you are.   sometimes i'd head to an encounter without much health and just die on purpose to regen my health.    ...what's the point then?    dark souls does it right by having an appropriate amount of consequences for dying.    even when you don't die enemies respawn after a campfire which made me question if i should even tag the campfire sometimes.   

[Legend]

I guess the limited flasks are essentially just parts of the health bar that are hidden.

Good point about dying on purpose to get full health. Would just be an annoying mechanic unless it's in something like multiplayer where every death matters. In animal well I did that a few times to refresh the consumable flowers.

[kitler53]

I guess the limited flasks are essentially just parts of the health bar that are hidden.

Good point about dying on purpose to get full health. Would just be an annoying mechanic unless it's in something like multiplayer where every death matters. In animal well I did that a few times to refresh the consumable flowers.

yeah exactly.   there has to be a concequence to death in order for non-regenerative health bars to matter.   in GoW it was fundamentally not all that different than regenerative health except the regen was "manual".   

i'll say this as well...
...regen health can be done wrong too.

in regenerative health i think the best solution is to only regen after completing an encounter.   i've played too many shooters where your shield regens after like 2-3 seconds of not taking fire and all that does is make me pop up for a bit and then hide for a bit.   maybe i should blame myself for playing the game "not fun" but all that waiting around for my shield to regen is not fun.

worst offender of all, imo, was metroid prime 2.   glacially slow regen in the "light" and a DoT anytime you were in the "dark".   the number of times i sat in a light well for like 3-5  minutes to regen my health made the game boring AF.   but too many of the encounters were stupid hard if you just ignored this mechanic and ran into combat in the dark areas.   i can't think of any other franchise that so quickly went from amazing to horrible like metroid prime did.