Inventive or creative health systems in video games

[Lilani]

I rather enjoy the dual health and sanity meters in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Because when you're really and truly terrified, that psychological pressure can cause physical effects which hinders your ability to think and act swiftly and rationally. You can't see straight, you can't move precisely, and if things get really bad you may even black out from the pressure. It makes perfect logical sense to include this in a survival horror game--your ability to keep it together affects your chances of survival as much as how injured you are. You can't exactly continue on if you've gone batshit insane from the pressure.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Only ones coming to mind are these:

Resistance Fall of Man: health was divided in 4 blocks of which each represented 25% health, partial depletion of only one block regenerated your health but emptying the same block requires a medpack to be refilled.

Metro 2033/ Last Light: While looking like standard health regen at first glance, you couldn't rely on it (regen is incredibly slow) on which health packs come into play.

I actually quite enjoy the Borderlands system. Your shield regenerates based on its make, and once that is gone your actual health is hit, which doesn't regenerate. Unless, of course you've invested some skill into the right things. And then of course when you do go down, Fight for Your Life gives you a chance to get back into the game instead of die, which costs you money as some incentive not to.

I just think its a clever take on the usual regen health systems in most FPSs.

And this.

Didn't want to mention it since I can't shutup about Borderlands2.

 

[DataSnake]

The Arkham games' system where you recover health by gaining XP, usually by beating up some thugs. Feels much more "Batman" than waiting for it to come back by itself or picking up medkits.

 

[Gormech]

Prince of Persia.
There was this dagger that used this time sand stuff to send you back a few seconds whenever you died. It was kinda fun.

 

[Hero of Lime]

I know people will be angry with me, but the regenerating health/med kit combo in Halo 1 is an excellent health system. What is particularly nice about it is that the shields are built into the universe rather than having a soldier with magical regenerating health. It's a good incentive to keep a look out for med kits, yet you still have a shot with full shields.

 

[Silvanus]

The system in Link to the Past, wherein if you lose some hearts, there's just not any health anywhere, and you inevitably die before long.

 

[Ninjat_126]

Prince of Persia.
There was this dagger that used this time sand stuff to send you back a few seconds whenever you died. It was kinda fun.

And drinking water refilled your health, but doing it mid-battle was difficult.

Also, water fountains were spaced out through platforming, in case you took some fall damage, but mostly fall damage was an instant kill so it didn't become a battle of attrition.

 

[Blaster395]

Wurm online actually had an intresting damage system from what I could recall when playing ages ago. Might be different now.

Separate parts of your body (each limb, hands, head, and torso) could recieve wounds of various HP damage. I think it was 0-2.5 for very light (think minor cuts or bruises), 2.5-5 for light (moderate sized cuts, strains, anything that will actually impair you), 5-10 for medium (large cuts, fractures), 10-20 for large (huge cuts, minor organ damage) and above 20 for very large (major organ damage).

All characters have a HP value of 100 and taking more damage than that = death

The creativity comes into it with the way healing works. Very light damage will heal in a matter of minutes on its own. Light damage will heal over an hour or so. Moderate damage will not heal without intervention in which case it becomes equivalent to light damage in healing rate. Heavy damage will slowly get worse (and can actually become very heavy damage) unless treated, at which point it will heal slowly. The same is roughly true for Very Heavy damage except that it can get worse rapidly enough to cause you to bleed out without urgent attention.

I feel that the way healing works is detailed enough to roughly represent how you need to treat real-world injuries without going full simulator level like dwarf fortress.

 

[McMarbles]

Superman Returns. Lousy game, but a great health system.

But how can Superman have a health system, you ask? Isn't he invulnerable?

Well, he doesn't. Metropolis does. And it's in your best interest to protect it.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Remember this you guys?

As far as I recall there was no "system", your tat just fills up with blood from damage until you die. There's no healing, just starting a new level clean. Still I thought as far as HUDs go, that's an interesting one.

Prince of Persia.
There was this dagger that used this time sand stuff to send you back a few seconds whenever you died. It was kinda fun.

And drinking water refilled your health, but doing it mid-battle was difficult.

Also, water fountains were spaced out through platforming, in case you took some fall damage, but mostly fall damage was an instant kill so it didn't become a battle of attrition.

I liked that in the games you could also drink from ANY water source, not just the fountain save points. You could drink the water from baths and puddles and STILL regenerate health. Doing it mid-battle was complicated as hell though.

 

[Yopaz]

Ah yes. Banjo-Tooie had Snowball Banjo. Your size indicated how much health you had and the tricky thing was that you needed to actually hurt yourself sometimes so you could go into small areas. You could refill your health with the usual honey combs or by rolling around on the snow and being in an area with high temperatures would cause you to lose health.

That was actually quite brilliant. Health turned into a puzzle.

OT: The Half-Life mod Hidden: Source had a neat one. Playing as the Hidden you could eat the people you killed in order to regain lost health. This would only work if there were enough left of them to eat though so if you killed them with a grenade or pigstick (one hit kill weapon) you'd be unable to get health from them.

 

[Alcom1]

Any Mechwarrior/MechCommander/BattleTech Game. Each component of your mech (Arms, Legs, Left Torso, Right Torso, Center Torso, Head, and sometimes other bits) has its own health system. Death occurs if both legs, the impractically-small-hit-box head, or the engine is destroyed.

There are additional complications. Torso segments have separate health systems for the front and rear. Taking out a side torso will destroy its attached arm. STD engines are only in the center torso, and faster XL engines take up the whole torso, so the XL engine will explode if any torso section is destroyed. Destroying both legs tends to take the longest but destroying one leg will severely slow down a mech. Destroying a segment with ammo stored will cause an ammo explosion, damaging adjacent segments.

 

[nykirnsu]

I know people will be angry with me, but the regenerating health/med kit combo in Halo 1 is an excellent health system. What is particularly nice about it is that the shields are built into the universe rather than having a soldier with magical regenerating health. It's a good incentive to keep a look out for med kits, yet you still have a shot with full shields.

I'm seconding this; that system was near perfect.
I though Space Marine's system was quite clever; you gain health from doing finishers, it gave a reason to actually want to pull off finishers, as well feeling like the proper thing for a space marine to do.

 

[SadisticFire]

I though Space Marine's system was quite clever; you gain health from doing finishers, it gave a reason to actually want to pull off finishers, as well feeling like the proper thing for a space marine to do.

I know people will be angry with me, but the regenerating health/med kit combo in Halo 1 is an excellent health system. What is particularly nice about it is that the shields are built into the universe rather than having a soldier with magical regenerating health. It's a good incentive to keep a look out for med kits, yet you still have a shot with full shields.

These two things are the two I really like. I can't really think of anything that inventive as I flip through my steam library.
I guess I wouldn't really say this is inventive but System Shock 2 had a good health system for what it was doing, survival horror. You were always low on health it felt like, it was rare that enemies would even drop the money required to get health, and fighting them usually brought more to you, and you spent valuable ammunition and weapon condition.

 

[Scolar Visari]

Brother's in Arms: Hell's Highway had a rather interesting take on health mechanics.

You would die in one shot from an enemy and the screen would slowly become unfocused and dark as the enemies' fire came closer to hitting you, while only spots of protective cover would remain highly visible.

 

[Godhead]

Dwarf Fortress.

Hit points? What are you talking about? You die when you bleed out, suffocate, or take a good hit to the head. Why would your life and death be determined by a bunch of points which will keep you in perfect condition until you run out, at which point you die instantly?

Death by cats.

OT: I really like the health system for the air ships in Guns of Icarus Online. Shit can get very frantic when you're engines and hull are on fire.

Spoiler

and then the engineer buffs the balloon