Health Packs, Medi Packs, Med Kits, First Aid Kits, Health Injectors, Healing Potions, Healing Salves – these are just a few aliases our best gaming buddy goes by. When the world turns their back on us after we get Swiss-cheesed by countless bullets, the only thing that comes to our aid is the much unappreciated Health Pack!
There’s no denying that these healing devices have been taken for granted since forever, but that’s not going to happen today. If you’re an action gamer at heart, take a few minutes off your busy killing schedules and join me as we pay tribute to one of the most overlooked part of video games.
Health Packs were introduced way back in the 2D side-scroller days, when developers rationalized and came to the conclusion that playable characters shouldn’t die just by touching a creature. I mean it’s kind of silly when your fully pumped hero dies just by being touched by a weak goon right? That’s when the concept of health and health meters/bars was born, which was a big step forward for action games; and with these health bars dawned a new age of health packs!
They started off in the form of pixelated heart icons or the infamous red cross. As they became more popular, developers adopted more 'relatable' icons to denote them, such as Food (my favorite being the pizza from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games, it always made my stomach rumble!) or Bandages. Their function was still simple though – you walk over them and you get healed, no questions asked.
It IS sad to see them go away :( A dimension of Gameplay has disappeared, we no longer need to save potions or stock up things for them .And because of that, even health Bars are disappearing,Screen = Red, then Run and Hide, also in games like in Fight Night R3, we have to look at the face and find out!
