Case of the Mondays: Regenerating Health is for Chumps.

It's Monday, and I'm feeling opinionated.

Unless you're some kind of super soldier or futuristic space marine, this is for you. What's up with modern shooters and rechargeable health? What's wrong with a health bar?

Almost every single shooter in todays market has regenerating health. Regenerating health doesn't make any sense in the first place, especially with games that are trying to be "realistic", I'm looking at you Call of Duty. A man takes a bullet, and after taking a thirty second break, he feels fine. What's up with that? It's not like the bullet dissolves away and he's Wolverine of X-Men.

Other games such as Mirror's Edge, Uncharted, and Gears of War have regenerating health. Once while playing Mirror's Edge, I took two .50 caliber rounds, after taking a quick break I was fine. The main character of Mirror's Edge is a 20 pound Asian girl. She should have been broken in half from the first shot. It also creates inconsistencies. In the game Red Dead Redemption, the main character gets shot in the first 10 minutes and is down for the count. After he gets "patched up" and takes on a bandit hideout with the local law enforcement, he can take several bullets, take cover and be fine.

Another problem with regenerating health, is that it breaks up the flow of game play. Sure, players should be taking cover, but it's a luxury. It makes it too easy for a player to get past an area. Just take some cover for a bit and they'll be fine. Health bars make it more a more tense experience, holding on by a thread can force players to think things through. If players make their way carefully through a level can make for a much more rewarding experience.

In multiplayer, having helath packs scattered about can really help out the player, by forcing him or her to be resourceful and use the environment, by memorizing health pack placement. It may be annoying to other players, but at least that players doing well. It's like having power weapons, it may not be unfortunate and frustrating for the others, but it creates a dynamic experience.

I think that we should be getting back to the old days of health bars and percentages, there was nothing wrong with them. It let us know when we were about to day, and we could still see where we were going. Bring the health bar back!