Regenerating health

    Regenerating health in video games, good or bad?
    Let's consider older games first
    Most games back then, you took one hit and died, and had a limited number of lives with no continues, or you had a health bar that did not regenerate and only one life but could continue, you restored health by picking up items (Examples include Contra and Legend of Zelda)

    This stays true up til around the N64 era, where we had a combination of both in most games, health and lives and continues, these things make games easier but were still challenging enough that you needed all 3

    I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but at one point, around last gen (PS2/Xbox/GC) we started having games with no lives at all, if you died you simply started again at the beginning of the area, which effectively meant infinite lives, and continues were removed altogether (Examples include Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, and the first Halo)

    Nowadays we have games that let you go from near death to full health in seconds just by taking cover
    These games still use the infinite lives mechanism, if you die you are simply set back some time, or even less if you save often (Mass Effect, Halo 2)

    Let's compare a few games, shooter genre because they benefit the most from health bars

    Doom had no regenerating health and death sent you back to the beginning of a level, you restored health through med packs scattered through levels
    Halo had a primary health being your shield which regenerated on it's own, and a secondary health that did not regenerate, but if it ran out you were killed and restarted at the last checkpoint
    Mass Effect has 2 health bars, much like Halo, only your secondary can be healed at almost any time, so it's like having several lives with no penalty for using one
    Halo 2 downgraded to a single health bar that regenerates on it's own, and rather quickly at that

    All of these changes have been made to make games easier in general
    Having to hunt for a med crate for 20 minutes avoiding every battle is not fun
    GTA4 for whatever reason does not go the route of regenerating health, which means if you barely scrape through a mission you have to search for a med pack or drive 10 minutes to your safehouse to save and heal
    In the middle of harder missions you find med crates or even body armor, so health isn't much of an issue
    There's almost no penalty for dying, but if your health could be restored to full before and after a mission it would be far easier, especially since if you fail a mission you can restart it immediately with full health

    Anyway, in single player games, regenerating health is not bad if implemented correctly, meaning it takes more than 5 seconds to regenerate and it's a slow constant heal, maybe 1 out of 100 points every second, so you can go slowly and be sloppy, or go fast and be careful

    Online games are a different story, regenerating health in them is bad altogether
    (see APB)
    Healing in a multiplayer game should be regulated to a player that's main purpose is healing, like a medic