''. The life bar (upper left) is almost depleted.]]
A or Health Points are used in many Video Games to display a character's health and how close the player is to failure (death, being knocked out, etc). Another variant of this is Life Points .
A typical life bar is a horizontal rectangle which begins full of colour. If damage is taken or mistakes are made, the coloured area gradually reduces. In some games, the bar can be set to unlimited, which means the full color remains the same even when one takes a hit.
There are many variations on the life bar:
- In '' Sonic Series '' there is not a typical life bar. Instead, the player collects rings which he use as a life indicator. They are shown as numbers at the upper left side of the screen. When an enemy hit the main character '' Sonic '', his rings scatter around. If the player is fast enough he can catch some of the scattered rings. If '' Sonic '' loses his rings he is vulnerable and can lose a life after an enemy's hit. When the player collects 100 rings together, '' Sonic '' gains an extra life.
- In '' Street Fighter '' and other Fighting Game s, the bar doesn't immediately decrease when damage is taken. Instead, an area representing the damage is marked, and the health lost quickly drains away. This is useful in assessing the amount of damage caused by a particular attack.
- Some games use an incremental bar, composed of many smaller bars. Each attack will remove a certain number of these bars. This system is used in the '' Mega Man '' series.
- In many '', the health bar must be above a certain percentage by the end of the song to pass it (often around 75%). In other games, including '' Dance Dance Revolution '', '' GuitarFreaks '', '' Pump It Up '' and '' FreQuency '', the health bar must simply be above 0% to continue playing.
- In '' Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan '' and the localized version of the game, '' Elite Beat Agents '' the health bar (called the Elite-O-Meter) starts out full and gradually decreases as time goes on, while playing well refills it from the draining of time. The player must keep it above zero in order to continue playing, and above a certain percentage of the meter at breaks in order to get better results on the top screen.
- Some video games also feature a recharging health bar (Sometimes depicted as an energy shield). In these games, the player character cannot usually take as much damage as a player with a traditional life bar, but health regenerates over time (Usually when the player is hiding from enemy fire). Notable examples of this are the Halo Series , '' Call Of Duty 2 '' and '' 3 '', '' Destroy All Humans! '' and '' Gears Of War ''.
- ''Gears of War'' makes use of a cog-shaped icon called the "Crimson Omen." If the player takes a certain amount of damage in a certain amount of time, a red cog begins to appear on the screen, becoming more defined, and then filling with blood. When it is completely full, a red skull appears in the middle, in most cases signifying that the player has died (in two-player co-operative games, however, the player may not have been killed outright; in those instances, the other player can revive the incapacitated player, provided, of course, that they themselves do not become incapacitated; if that happens, then both players die, and the mission fails).
- In a similar vein, '' Call Of Duty '' does not have a health bar, instead choosing to start by showing where the damage is coming from, then, if enough damage is taken quickly enough, the edges of the screen begin turning red. If too much damage is taken in too short an interval, the player dies, and the mission fails.
Another way of displaying a character's health is with numbers instead of a bar, commonly called '', when the numbers were replaced with a health bar.
In order to be more '' has no life bar; instead, the screen flashes red, and vision becomes blurred (more damage indicated by a deeper red coloration). In more recent games, characters usually slouch over and breathe heavily (as a result of low health) when left on idle.
In a large number of games, if the player's health is almost empty ('critical'), it may flash or give some other warning indication to reflect the severity of the damage incurred. In the Legend Of Zelda games, a continuous beeping sound would play if the player fell to a critically low number of hearts. In '' Call Of Duty 2 '', blood seeps onto the screen and the player character can be heard groaning in pain.
In ''Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas'', the length of the health bar (and the amount of damage the player can take) increases to the maximum upon the completion of the 'Ambulance' missions; alternatively, the health bar's length increases gradually with the player's average lifespan. Likewise, the armour bar increases upon completion of the Police 'Vigilante' missions.
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