Games that had good regeneration gameplay mechanics

[M_I_C_K_E_Y_M_O_U_S_E]

Regen health is the future. Might as well just get over it and look for games that did a good job of it.

I pick TF2 personally. Most of the regeneration comes from your team mates, and the health packs are normally in nice strategic places to fight over.

 

[Jasede]

Not played a single one.
Edit: Oh! Diablo 2.

 

[entertainer]

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[baronjohn]

Crysis and Mirror's Edge are examples that it can be well done.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Depends on what you mean by 'regeneration', because if it's supposed to be 'sit in a corner and wait for wounds to magically close' then there's probably not a single one that had it done right (maybe except Halo, since it has regenerating shields and not health which at least makes some sense).

And if you mean regenerating health as in, 'drink this potion/cast this spell/use this item to regain 5 hp every 3 seconds' it's been around since like, forever.

Also,

Regen health is the future

Then there are some very dark clouds gathering up ahead.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Yeah Halo is about it since they incorporated the health regeneration into the overall rhythm and flow of the combat. In every other shooter, health regen just feels like easy mode and an acknowledgment by the developers that they really only know how to rip off Halo and don't have the first clue about designing a decent shooter.

 

[baronjohn]

No, Halo was shit.

 

[Jim Cojones]

Chronicles of Riddick? You've got few levels of health (four at the start) and you can only regenerate to the maximum of the current one, when you lose enough hit points to drop to the lower one, you have to find a medical centre to regain lost levels. So you can regen only from slight injuries but after taking heavy fire you are close to death. A fine mechanic because it makes gameplay a little different than in other shooters but doesn't make the game annoyingly easy.

And if by regeneration you mean every system that allow you to regain health then JA2 and Betrayal at Krondor have got good ones.

 

[Perfect Fool]

Planescape: Torment had a revolutionary regeneration mechanic...in the sense that it was actually logical in the context of the story, which is something few other games with the feature have bothered to attempt to achieve.

The Tattoo of the Lost Incarnation further boosted health regen (at least as far as I can remember) so you could say that it had one of the most player tweakable and advanced health regen systems ever designed, and that every game released afterwards is just another example of the decline in gaming.

 

[DriacKin]

Not played a single one.
Edit: Oh! Diablo 2.

Does D2 really count?
If I remember correctly, your health only regenerated if you were wearing a magic item that had a health-regen property.

 

[GthrustBaby]

GUILD WARS

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I remember an old game that had a regeneration system I liked: Terminator 2029.

Whenever you were playing you could just press "R" and the armour you wore would enter repair mode, and you could watch as your "health" slowly rose to maximum. However, the game kept running while you did this, so Skynet robots could find you and attack you, and while in Repair mode you were defenseless. But in true Bethesda fashion, there was no delay for exiting repair mode, so usually whatever happened to chance upon you would die in abour 3 seconds.

Another game that did interesting things with regeneration was Lands Of Lore 2. Compared to modern games, LoL2 regeneration was slow, but the interesting bit was that if you had an item or regeneration equipped and took loads of damage at once, the item would save you from death but break in the process. Generally not a good idea as there were only 2 or 3 items that did regenerate health.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

starcraft

 

[Gragt]

Rogue and NetHack.

 

[Dark Matter]

The first Halo is one of the only shooters that did the regenerating health mechanic properly.

 

[Zomg]

Games with "vampiric" regen are often pretty good. Meaning, you have some means to or inherently draw health from combat enemies. Health becomes like a resource you gamble with to get more. Potion/battery-type regen is a fucking snooze, always. At least "reboot" regen like Halo where you just zip to full health after a few seconds of not taking fresh damage isn't a worthless quartermaster jerkoff.

 

[denizsi]

Real men prefer their games with health degeneration.

 

[DefJam101]

Crysis...well done.

No.

And again no. It reduced the game to CLOAK/STRENGTH/SHOOT/CLOAK/WAIT/STRENGTH/SHOOT/CLOAK over and over again. Of course the fucking idiotic AI didn't help.

 

[denizsi]

Perhaps he was referring to the multiplayer Power Struggle?

 

[DraQ]

I'd say the pace in STALKER wasn't bad, but it had insta-bandages and insta-medkits, which have to go a-fucking-way from FPS/RPG land.

 

[DriacKin]

VtM:B had auto health regeneration, iirc.
But, it went well with the setting: You are a vampire, so you heal much quicker than humans.

 

[SCO]

I had auto-regeneration of health, but it mostly shifted the burden to blood (albeit with the ... interesting effect of drinking blood increasing regeneration to ballistic levels, but otherwise people would stand around doing nothing).

 

[Double Ogre]

Games with "vampiric" regen are often pretty good. Meaning, you have some means to or inherently draw health from combat enemies. Health becomes like a resource you gamble with to get more. Potion/battery-type regen is a fucking snooze, always. At least "reboot" regen like Halo where you just zip to full health after a few seconds of not taking fresh damage isn't a worthless quartermaster jerkoff.

Yeah, I like the vampiric approach. E.g. in American's McGee's Alice enemies leave health/mana crystals when they die. This keeps the gameplay fast-paced (you don't have to look for health packs), without making it cheesy.

Real men prefer their games with health degeneration.

Doom 3 Nightmare difficulty?

 

[Mystary!]

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the World did this great. You got your stadard medpaks and natural health regeneration, but only if you havn't got any major injuries or fractures. You need to take care of them first, with special equipment(splints, needle & thread), before the regeneration triggers.

 

[Zyrxil]

Chronicles of Riddick worked great with the 'boxes' of health that only regenerated up to the max of the box your health is currently in.

I actually do like the dynamic of 1 regenerating Shield bar + non regenerating Health bar, as long as Shield doesn't regenerate that fast.

In the various Team Fortress games, medics slowly regenerate health; hiding in a corner for 5 secs does very little, but if you leave them alone for 30 seconds they'll be back to full.