I’m one of those people that basically never uses consumables in games because I never know when a good time to use them is. I really like the way expedition 33 does it instead because there’s no reward to hoarding them so I actually do use them. You only have a couple and they refresh every time you rest, plus you can also increase your max of each throughout the game.

Non-healing consumables are always either so strong they’re required to finish the game (Terraria) or so weak that they may as well be a placebo (Cyberpunk).

The only ones that make sense and I am okay with are survival type games where you just auto eat and drink as necessary.

The worst are where you have consumable items that you carry, and this includes healing items when picked up from a container but then picking up the same item off the ground or a table or something auto consumes it for health. Just lemme take it with me and use it when needed! 😩

A trend that really took off is allowing checkpoint based-save games to remember I used consumables when reloading a save after you fail a mission. This conditions you to worry you might hit a hard spot and use all your consumables, and still lose, and be out all the money/time it took to get them.

Games used to just reload a savestate so if you died and had to load a checkpoint you “didnt use” those consumables. Bethesda games are great about this Used a lockpick magazine and there was a trap on the other side? Dont worry fam use that magazine again and be ready for round 2!

Metal Gear Solid had a weird halfway version of this: you would automatically eat a ration and heal when taking a fatal hit, but only if it was equipped in the active item slot. It was always fun to get an unexpected game over because you forgot to swap items back before a boss battle.

Loses 50 HP

Automatically uses 200 HP healing item

Reject modernity, return to Doom