It’s My Life

Sorry for the Bon Jovi reference but it just seemed to fit.

I had an interesting discussion with friends the other day about life meters. Life meters are a part of games that I have mixed emotions about.  Back in the day when arcade machines were fed with quarters, the life meter was a necessary evil.  If you were not dieing then you were not feeding the beast.

With the advent of home consoles systems, life meters were made obsolete.  Dying every few seconds to get more quarters no longer serves any purpose. It was just annoying and could ruin a great game.

So, on the one hand, new games with the old school life meters are pointless, but if the concept is modified to work so that life is regenerative then you have a visual way to gauge your health but not an instant game over.

This point is driven home by the Halo games and KillZone.

The health bar in these games were great visual aids as to how much health you have left.  So, if you are in a firefight and the indicator gets low you know that you have to scurry off and heal.

Games like Uncharted and COD use the pre-death rattle red screen and shortness of breath to warn you that you are about to DIE.  This type of warning system is hard for me to judge.  This means I usually charge in to battle all LLD.  (Navy speak for “light or limited duty” and is given to injured sailors.)

To end this post before I start to ramble, I think that the life meters of yore served their purpose but if they are not an integrated measurement tool in newer games they are worthless.

Source: ccgd