I don't really agree. When this first showed up I thought it was a little lame, but when I'm playing a game with medkits, I spend way too much time quicksaving. I'm constantly afraid that at some point I'll get into a situation with low health and no medkit so that it will be impossible to get out without loading a much older savegame.

Then, when I have a mountain of medkits saved up, nothing really poses a danger to me, but I still feel the need to load and re-play if I lost too much health during a fight.

If there's regeneration plus evenly spaced checkpoints - that's just much more exciting if done correctly (like in COD 4). You know that up to the next checkpoint, there's nothing you can do but concentrate on seeking cover and aiming.

Far Cry 2 tried to compromise: The health bar gets chopped up into smaller, individually regenerating bars. If you accidentally get hit by one bullet - no big deal. If you get hit by multiple bullets in succession, that means you are doing something wrong and you lose a sub-bar that will only come back with a health kit. And if you are almost dead, you still get a few seconds to run for cover and patch yourself up (which takes some time).

I think Mafia II (as a more recent example) is pretty good at this, although I only played the demo. If you don't look for a good route with lots of cover, two bullets can kill you.