AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Even when you had First-Aid Kits in the first two games, you still had plenty of incentive to not rush blindly into a situation. Having regenerating health just limits the sense of danger in the game because it's okay, Booker can just hide behind a wall while the jelly on his face gets wiped off. Having non-regenerating health would also make 1999 mode in Infinite even more challenging in that they would most likely limit the amount of first-aid kits that you could carry, as well limit the amount that would be available in the first place.

It just seems like they're doing this because they're afraid that the common gamer can't manage their health or learn to plan things out.

How it pans out in terms of number of guns and type of health regen is more art than science. I did find that after a certain point in Bioshock 1&2 I didn't have to worry about ammo or cash. I expect that there is going to be a strong in universe connection to Rapture, but they don't want to talk about it. If it's major, it spoils the story to do so. If it's minor, they get attacked for mentioning it.

How sick would a Rapture Vs. Columbia game be?

That sounds pretty cheesy. I like the idea of Columbia and Rapture being in entirely separate universes and I think that that would be for the best. Exploring a new world with new ideas and philosophies to take apart and analyze sounds a lot more fun than having to deal with Rapture for a third time, even if it is some kind of bizarre inter-time/universe war.

I would also like to argue that the first-aid kits in Rapture actually improved the pacing of the game. When you're low on health in BioShock, you just inject a first-aid kit and keep on fighting, rather than breaking away from the action and waiting for the jelly on your screen to go away. It also encourages you to play better in that if you rush in blindly or fight horribly, you'll end up wasting the med kits and burning up cheddar to buy new ones.

Except it doesn't change the pacing that way.
It's not as if you can even go into it with the same mindset. I COULD rush into fights in Bioshock because hey I can just use a first-aid kit if I get hurt. Here, you don't even have the option. You rush blindly in and chances are you're gonna die because you need the time to regen. The pacing becomes more survival over killing everything without fucking caring. You're not breaking away from a bunch of action just to regen, you're pacing yourself, making sure you don't even need to get to that point.

It's actually much better in regards to planning things out. I never, not once, had to worry about my health kits in Bioshock. Fucking never. I could waste them all and oh hey there's enough cash to buy them all back right here, or even better there's fifty just fucking laying around, or just hack/break a few health stations WHATEVER. I bodaciously just out-tanked Big Daddies because I COULD.

There was no real challenge, there was no real difficulty. The only times I died was when I was so into the action I wasn't paying attention to my health, which generally says a lot because your focus on staying alive in a game shouldn't ever naturally shift like that.

However, in games with health-regen, there's actually way more strategy to it. You don't have things to just regenerate your health, you have to actually watch how much damage you're taking, and pull back before you die. There's always the POSSIBILITY of dying because hey you take some time to recharge and people are still shooting you during that. So you don't just fly into a fight not giving a shit, you pick your targets, you make sure you have cover, and you actually strategize.

Now, honestly the best-case scenario for any standard FPS is health-kits that you can't pick up and just use on the spot, like Half-Life and other older FPS games, because that gives the survival aspect while adding this massive difficulty of not having handy fix-em up powers.

BUT, being able to just carry around these kits that fill your health entirely immediately, you can carry fucking nine of them, and they're everywhere? That's not particularly strategic. Health-regen is a huge step up.

I should also add; Bioshock, 2, and Infinite? They're supposed to be suspenseful. Bioshock really tried to be survival horror. It failed in part because of the lack of necessity to conserve things like health kits because they were everywhere. There was no fear of death. Infinite adds that fear of dying. Through just that one point, it gains a massive advantage over it's predecessors.

It just pisses me off that they incorporated regenerating health when they could have just as easily thought up some kind of health system that didn't involve tanking damage with first aid kits. They just went straight for regenerating health instead of trying to come up with something better than wiping blood off your eyes behind a bunch of sandbags.

They can build this awesome game world with a floating city, a woman with special space-tearing powers, and a giant steampunk bird-monster, but they can't come up with a health system that works?

Alright, so in a game where massive action scenes are happening, the world is giant, and you'll often be moving from place to place during fights (as shown by gameplay trailers), what would you do that didn't involve health kits?

Because personally I can't think of jack shit.

Not to mention the factor of familiarity is in play. People expect a game to have a specific kind of health system. Doing anything radically different alters the mindset of the game, and of the player. This CAN work, such as the jump from the 2D Mario games using the Super Mario aspect as health, to the 3D games having a health meter. However, at the same time, the style of gameplay was changed with it.

Infinite doesn't have much potential to get out of these norms, sadly. A lot of games don't. It's too much of a standard FPS in terms of it's combat mechanics, even since the first game, to be able to break new ground without it being done badly or having it feel out of pace.



i uh

i'm like 90% sure the health system is gonna work?

unless the game is like in early beta when it's released.

By "health system that works" I mean a health system that involves a life bar that you have to restore in some other way than simply walking it off. They have all of these awesome designers at Irrational, and I can see that they're awesome what with all of the art and gameplay we've seen of Infinite, so I don't think that it would be impossible for them to come up with a solution.

Well there is a health bar, at least. No "jelly screen" either if that helps.

Rewatching the gameplay trailer from E3 2011? Regenerating health seems like a really good idea for the style of game. There's a lot of little breaks that actually add to the action. You can create cover dynamically with Elizabeth, which means that even when you're hiding out you can be affecting the battlefield. The skyways create tension and force you to think about where you're going, but they also provide time for you to cool down from a firefight both in-game and mentally.

Basically, it looks like the game is either working around the mechanic, or the mechanic fits naturally into the style. Either way, it works with the game, which means they did put thought into it. Which means other solutions would change the gameplay, because now a component is missing that was important.

Alright then. We'll just have to see how it works out.

What if
you had health packs that allow you to regen health for a short time instead of instantly healing you
that'd be cool

what I don't like about the regenerating health system is that it isolates every encounter. If you haphazardly stumble through a fight and escape with 1HP, there's no punishment for that poor performance because your health comes back in a few seconds. Just don't trigger the next encounter for a moment.

I think just cranking down the accessability of health kits would've helped with the difficulty problems a lot. Also only letting you carry one at a time would be an improvement imo. It's not like health pack systems inherently make a game so that you can just tank damage and mow down enemies like you could in bioshock. pretty much any old and challenging FPS provides an example for that.

I do like the regeneration health pack idea, though. it'd prevent you from mashing F to tank big daddies and at the same time provide that punishment for failing at a fight I talked about by consuming a finite resource.

It'd be a bit interesting, but you'd have to work it weird.
If they regen all your health, why not just have health regen because you're not gonna be using them very often so you'll have them piled up unless they're overly scarce. If they only regen'd part of it, they'd have to be everywhere so you COULD be at full health in situations.
The regen speed also matters, which would determine it's tactical advantages. Use it now for quick amounts of health, or after fire fights so it can have time to regen.



I dunno about having one health kit at a time, if you're gonna carry them around, only having one means that's essentially useless with the way Bioshock combat works.

I do agree that health kits that are just pick-up-insta-use are basically the best system. I could see one where you can carry one health kit, but you insta-use any others if you're carrying one. So you have this kit spare for emergencies.

The only problem with insta-use kits is that the player usually has a shitton of health to compensate. You die really easily with health regen because you don't have a lot of it. With the kits though, you have a whole bunch to get you through fights. It makes you kinda both a powerhouse and also really fragile.

Really it depends on the kind of game you want.

Heath kits restore a portion of health, moderate occurrence tonic/whatever allows for regen?

Except that would essentially mean this one tonic is incredibly important to have basically always. You won't be experimenting with different kinds, you'll have one static one and anything else you find. It'd get stale quickly.

And insta-use health-kits usually restore a portion of health, unless there's several different kinds that restore different amounts.

You also had those goofy regen tanks so there was no incentive not to run blindly into a firefight