descender wrote on Nov 9, 2012, 14:58:
I have to agree, regenerating health and/or ammo is just lazy game design. There is no tension, no fear... just lazily blasting your way through a shooting gallery.
One of my favorite "video game memories" was from HalfLife 1... where I was careless during one point of the game (i believe it was blast pit) and wasted a ton of ammo... then had to go through almost 3 levels with barely a clip in any particular gun and considerably low health. I will never forget the sheer terror crawling around those corridors.
Ok, but how many times did you die, or use too many bullets in a firefight, so you decided to quick-load? How many fights did you do 4-10 times?
The worst instance of this, for me, was that sequence in Far Cry where you had a big firefight then had to run out into a field full of 15-20 fat mutants with rocket launchers. We're talking 20-30 reloads, at least.
Regenerating health (never seen regenerating ammo, outside of Borderlands, which has requires you to make a sacrifice to get) doesn't diminish challenge. It doesn't diminish threat or urgency. When your screen is flashing, everything is blinking, you still get that need to perform. People act like any time your health is low you can just hide - it often doesn't work like that because, if you're near a place to hide, you aren't near a firefight. If you're in a firefight there's nowhere to hide.
I really don't trust the "it's so much more intense to not have it" opinion if the people spouting it use quicksaves and quickreloads. Those, to me, can be worse. I remember parts of some games where I'd quicksave every 30 seconds during a boss fight. Get a nice volley in without taking damage? Quicksave!