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Healing is a central part of the video game feedback loop. You fight some bad guys, they injure you, and you need to heal yourself before you fight some more. Without a healing mechanic, you’d have to make it through the whole game only taking a handful of hits and there would be a lot of controllers through TV screens.
In a lot of games, healing is a functional necessity that is handled in a way that is only loosely tied to the theme. We’re all familiar with the red healing potion, which has its origins in fairy tales and old myths. Some games opt for the medipack if they’re trying to get away from the fantasy aesthetic and go for something more ‘realistic.’
As gamers, we’re willing to overlook the fact that baddies carry random potions and first aid kits with them, and necking a quick potion will heal any and all wounds. But isn’t it better when games can incorporate the healing in a way that feels thematic and adds to the immersion in some way?
There are some games that master this and make healing an interesting part of the game rather than an afterthought…
Horizon: Zero Dawn - Healing Herbs
Horizon: Zero Dawn is heralded as one of the best open-world titles ever, with incredible tension-filled combat, a unique story, and engaging characters. In a world where nature has overtaken civilization and the remaining humans are plagued by giant robot creatures, it’s a constant fight for survival. Aloy must learn the landscape and forage for plants to create weapons, craft useful items, and heal herself.
Horizon: Zero Dawn isn’t the first game to use herbs as a healing item, but it does it best. As you explore the landscape, you’ll come across red herbs that can be plucked and put into your herb pouch, ready to heal you when you need it. Keeping a full pouch gives you a better chance of staying alive next time you come across a huge metal alligator. The healing herbs blend into the landscape but you can pick out the red flowers, giving you a real sense of searching and foraging to survive. Not to mention there is an amazingly satisfying crunch every time you pick a herb.
Fallout 3 - Cannibal Perk
Fallout is everybody’s favourite post-apocalyptic survival game, and it has an excellent thematic healing system. Eating and drinking to regain health is a familiar mechanic, but you also have to manage your radiation levels. Most of the food and drink you find will increase your radiation levels, eventually damaging and killing you. You can, of course, reduce radiation levels with Radaway, and there are some sources of radiation-free health around, like purified water and Stimpaks.
This system introduces a nice bit of risk management. If you’re in a pinch, it might be best to drink that radiation-filled toilet water to get a few hit points back. But if you don’t have any Radaway on you and you’re riddled with radiation, that can of Pork ‘n’ Beans may not be a good idea.
But even though the Fallout healing system itself is very interesting, it makes this list for a more specific reason; the Cannibal Perk. When you hit level 12, you get the option to become a cannibal, which comes with certain benefits. When you’re in sneak mode, you can creep up to a corpse and feast on it, restoring 25 hit points. Of all of the healing consumables in video games, human flesh has to be one of the weirdest. Be careful though, you’ll still get rads from eating corpses, and if anybody witnesses it, you’ll lose karma and be accused of a crime against humanity, which is fair enough really.
The Cannibal Perk is such a great healing mechanic because it leans heavily into the role-playing element of Fallout. It’s not just a way to regain hit points, it’s a central character point that has far-reaching consequences because the karma system impacts all of your interactions throughout the game. As you wander the wasteland, feasting on the corpses of raiders you have killed, you slip further and further into darkness, and the way that NPCs respond to you reflects that. If you want to be accepted, you must resist the urge to nibble on the toes of vanquished enemies and search for some Stimpaks instead.
Max Payne - Crunching Painkillers
Max Payne is the iconic shooter about a hardboiled New York detective dishing out his own brand of vigilante justice against the drug addicts that murdered his family. Ask people what the best part of this game was and they’ll probably say bullet time. There’s no denying it feels amazing to dive in slow motion and mow down a couple of thugs before you hit the ground. It’s made even better by the leather duster flowing behind you as you run around the city, blasting your way through the criminal underworld.
But the healing system in the game is just as cool if you ask me. Ironically, for a man that is hunting drug addicts, Max Payne has a painkiller addiction. See what they did there? Whenever you’re injured after a shootout, you reach into your jacket and neck a few pills to bring your health back. You’re probably thinking, isn’t that just a health pack?
Fine. It’s a health pack, but it’s the theming that makes it so effective. You just feel so cool throwing back handfuls of pills and crunching them down without a second thought about recommended dosages. It brings that whole strung-out cop falling apart at the seams thing to life. Max Payne is stumbling through his quest for vengeance, only able to go on by plunging himself further into addiction.
Such a simple retheming of the classic first aid kit, with a satisfying crunch sound effect, makes healing a brilliant narrative device.
Mad Max - Scarce Water Supplies
Mad Max was the surprisingly good 2015 adaptation of the film series, and the way that it handles healing played on one of the major plot points. In the movies and the game, water is a scarce resource and whoever controls it commands power over the rest of the poor souls navigating the desolate wasteland.
In the game, your water canteen is your healing potion. Whenever you are feeling worse for wear, take a swig and you’ll be right as rain. But if you get caught in the middle of nowhere and your canteen runs dry, you better not get into any fights. There are water holes and taps littered around the wasteland, but they are few and far between, so you have to manage your water resources very carefully.
Real panic sets in when you’re down to your last drop of water, your health is low, and a bunch of angry raiders are charging toward you. Sometimes, punishing health systems can be a chore and grinding for health resources becomes an irritating necessity. But in Mad Max, searching the wasteland for a drop of water before heading out to explore is all part of the fun.
The Getaway - Taking A Breather
Looking back, it seems crazy that the Getaway was championed for its realistic graphics. But at the time, it really felt like being thrust into the middle of a London gangster movie. The graphics might not be impressive by today’s standards but the voice acting was excellent, the plot and writing were top-notch, and it had some cool little mechanics that boosted immersion. The removal of the minimap in favour of indicators on the car showing you where to go is an excellent example. It also had a great healing system that was essentially regeneration with a few extra steps.
There’s no health bar, but you can tell how injured you are based on the size of the blood patch spreading across the back of your suit. When you’re close to death, all you need to do is find a wall and stand for a second and you will lean against it, regaining health and shrinking the blood stains with every breath.
The thing that was great about the Getaway is that you’re one man going up against a powerful crime boss. You die pretty easily and you’re meant to feel helpless throughout. The healing system adds to that sense, and it’s great for creating tension. When you’re on the brink of death, slumped against a wall to regain your health, it only takes one goon to come round the corner and you’re finished.
That ten seconds spent huffing and puffing your injuries away, hoping you won’t get caught out, remains one of the most tension-filled moments in gaming.
Outriders - Kill or Be Killed
The standard healing mechanic involves taking out enemies who then drop health consumables you can use to heal yourself. In Outriders, an online coop looter-shooter, they cut out the middleman and you heal directly every time you kill an enemy. This forces you to play aggressively and if you try to hide behind cover the whole game, you’ll end up dead.
This mechanic is also combined with the class system, to create something truly innovative. The class you are playing dictates how you have to kill an enemy in order to regain health. If you’re a Devastator, you need to get into the mix because only close-range kills restore health. Tricksters are the same, but they get shields back too. Pyromancers need to first mark an enemy with a skill and then kill them for a health bonus. Technomancers, on the other hand, don’t need to kill an enemy as they get a small amount of health for any damage dealt.
Health regeneration is capped at one-third of your total health, so to stay alive, you’ll need to play to your strengths and actively hunt down enemies. Of all the games on this list, Outriders is probably the one that drives the gameplay the most, making it more engaging than other looter-shooters out there.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - Train To Be A Doctor
For a lot of people, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is the best game in the franchise. The tone and pacing are spot on, the innovative camo system makes for some awesome gameplay, and it changed our idea of what the PS2 was capable of. It also has one of the most detailed healing systems ever seen in gaming.
Healing tends to be quite abstract, even in the games on this list. Been shot a bunch of times? Just crunch some painkillers down and that somehow magically closes the bullet wounds. Just been charged by a huge metal bull? Those red herbs you found earlier will fix all of your broken bones. But Snake Eater took a more realistic approach.
When you get injured, you’re not just depleting a health bar, you are actually getting a specific injury. There are specific methods that you need to use to cure each injury, making it feel like you’re actually healing yourself, not just taking an arbitrary healing consumable. For example, if you have an arrow wound, you first need to apply disinfectant, then use a knife to remove the arrow, and finally, use a Styptic to cover the wound.
Not only does this mean that healing feels incredibly real, it means that fixing yourself is actually quite tough. You need to find and carry a lot of different items to deal with major injuries, so avoiding dangerous situations becomes a lot more important.
This healing system isn’t for everybody and some people find it unnecessary and cumbersome. But there’s no denying that it nails the realism perfectly.
What’s your favourite healing mechanic in a game? Does the classic health potion break immersion for you?