The 7 Best Video Game Lifebars
- December 04, 2008 16:58 PM PST
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Join GamePro as we celebrate our seven all-time favorite video game lifebars!
Lifebars are a prominent, yet under-appreciated part of videogame history. Helping us keep tabs on our characters health without detracting from the gameplay experience is key--making a memorable lifebar is a task unto itself. While some games have done away with lifebars for more abstract and less memorable means (we're looking at you, Gears of War), we choose to celebrate games that have shown us our status in unique and enjoyable ways.
#7: Heart and Brain (Primal Rage)
Who can forget the beating heart and pulsating brain gauges of the cult fighting game where you pummel your opponents as dinosaurs and prehistoric apes? The best part of Primal Rage's health bars are when a character is beaten to death. Once this happened, the fighter's heart bursts, leaving a bloody streak splattered on the screen. Your brain gauge in the game is equally as amusing: once it is completely depleted, a surge of electricity fries your brains, leaving you temporarily brain dead and susceptible to your enemy's onslaught of attacks.
#6: EKG (Resident Evil Series)
Capcom's zombie-ravaging survival horror series has several interesting ways in which the player's health is displayed. If enough zombies take bites out of your delicious flesh, you develop a limp, and the more scathed you get the more crippled you'd become making it difficult to move around. And the actual lifebar in Resident Evil games is just as memorable. Instead of your standard health bar, the amount of life you have left before turning into food for the living dead is shown by an Electrocardiogram (EKG). Sure, other games have done it since Resident Evil, but it's never fit so well as it does in the RE universe.
#5: Tattoo on Boob (Trespasser: Jurassic Park)
Okay, Trespasser: Jurassic Park (shouldn't the title be the other way around?) might not have the name recognition that the other games on this list have, but what this relatively obscure FPS does have is one of the most unique heath display systems we've ever seen. In Trespasser, you play as Anne whose plane crashes on the dinosaur-infested island The Lost World. If being haunted by the disembodied voice of John Hammond (the old dude with the white beard and cane from the first film) wasn't weird enough, your health in the game is displayed by a heart tattoo on Anne's right breast that fills up with ink and detail as you take damage.
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- Dec 04 2008 at 03:53:15:PM PST
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I'm glad to see Dead Space in there... should get top spot IMO. The Zelda health bar is great... but I absolutely hate it when your life is low and it constantly beeps... I think I'd rather die than to hear the beeping. Rock Meter is kinda dumb... and John has been dead for almost 30 years... so not too soon, just a bad joke.
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That Trespasser boob life bar -- LOL! You know, one of the main guys behind that bomb of a game later went on to help create the original Xbox.
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There was a game where when you were close to death you were in your underwear. It should be on there.
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ShortHairedOffender, are you talking about Ghosts and Goblins? Now that you mention it, it seems like another game used that device too.
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Just seeing the heart containers makes me hear the horrible warning sign that shows up when you are down to hearts late in the game.
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Good list. Very good list. Who could forget Primal Rage? The heart beating out of control. Jurassic Park boobs? Never heard of that one, but it looked good ha ha. I knew Dead Space would find a way onto the list, pretty awesome feature, completely refreshing. Last but not least, the Doom face, I loved that, still do. Worse on the list? The Zelda heart bar, ahhh, hate that noise when you get critical. Cool list Gamepro.
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Banjo wrote:
OMG! No honey combs?!
So much more memorable than some of these.
agreed
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