Regenerative Health

This is just a template, I'm going to come back to this, but I really want to put it on the door step sort to speak.

I hate the use of regenerative health in games in an attempt to fake tension and suspense. Regenerative health is fine and dandy in adventure games like Myst and LA Noire. The point isn't to survive in those games, it is to explore and solve puzzles. In those situations it makes sense that it would be a means to inject quick fire fights to add to the narrative experience as a whole.

No. My problem lies mainly in FPS games containing regenerative health. It takes art and delicacy to craft a game in which every step lurks danger and challenge. To make sure that the game as a whole is balanced from beginning to end, like a river flowing and ebbing to the bay, with a near rhythmic quality. It completely irritates me that such creativeness is now a rarity.

It's almost insulting how cheap this tactic is. It literally just throws in "firefights" in a vain attempt to capture any feeling of urgency and danger. You no longer are playing a game, you are simply traveling to these "hot spots". It becomes more of an interactive movie than a novel, taking a tram rail to the next 'game' portion, get a brief 2 minute gameplay period, and go back on your way to the next station. The veil is so thin that it nearly disgusts me, it makes me question why they even bother with controls; just put it on a blu-ray and let me watch whatever asinine story they were attempting to tell.

Game-play and story are suppose to be intertwined, this is what allows me to consider them interactive narratives. Making game-play a cheap vehicle to traverse a super-polished road of story makes the entire experience akin to watching a movie because the book it was based off was too much of a read. It makes things bland, linear and standardized. No longer does effort and skill come into the equation to color a games experience. Everyone simply is able to strap in, digest the pre-chewed food, and say "please sir, may I have another."

Remember when you could talk to your friends about the same game and how that conversation was novel and interesting? Yeah, I know you don't, because now you all play the exact same game.