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VenkuTurMukan

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Regnerative Health (First Blog Post)

Hello, World! Venku here...

I've been thinking about regenerative health lately. It's a beautiful thing. My screen turns red and I crouch behind a wimpy wooden crate; the red fades. I can do this as long as I want, usually.

But is it good for gaming?

I think not. At least, not in general.

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Goldeneye 007: Ahh, yes, the Rare gem. This game implemented health with armor. Nothing regenerated. If you got hit, you got hit, and you had to find a medpack. To boost your health (by a ton), you could pick up armor. The remake features regenerative health, although the "007 Classic" difficulty challenges you to either remain stealthy or remain alive.

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Halo: The original Halo (Combat Evolved) had you take cover when your shields were down, and they slowly regenerated. If you got hit with your shields down, you would lose health but could still regenerate your shields. To get more health, you had to find good ol' medpacks. There was no escaping from a plasma grenade stuck to your face. The system made sense.

WHERE IS YOUR HEALTH, SOLDIER??
WHERE IS YOUR HEALTH, SOLDIER??

Call of Duty 2: The famous (or infamous) CoD franchise has been targeted for both praise and criticism. Frankly I could go either way. I enjoy playing split-screen Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops with my friend on his PS3. The cinematics of the single-player campaign, though largely predictable, are impressive and massive in scale. The people on multiplayer are either ten years too young to play the game or trolls (both are whiny little... (*walks away muttering*)). But health has been replaced with something that could be more accurately explained as "will-power" or maybe "constitution." You simply take cover and much like the Terminator, you just push out the bullets from your skin and keep on truckin'. "It's just a flesh wound." A sticky grenade will still rip you to shreds if somebody gets in a lucky toss, but Predator missiles don't even crack the drywall in your neighbor's trailer home. The sense of damage and how the human body handles it is not portrayed well in a game that tries to advertise as a "realistic" war simulation (Battlefield does a better job in that case).

Of course, there are other games like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 that really challenge your knowledge of your enemies and your surroundings, where only a few shots bring you down. These don't seem to get as much attention, but they're generally great games.

A workaround to the mainstream system? Perhaps. But that's for another time.

That's it for now, thanks for reading.

~Venku Tur'Mukan

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