Game elements that need to be retired

In the past few weeks, I've been thoroughly enjoying Zero Punctuation (note: not-safe-for-work). Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's take on games is quite humorous. But in his review of Super Mario Galaxy, he touched upon a subject that I happen to agree with, and I liked the analogy he used. But, I figured, why stop at one game element that needs to die?

So, I figured I'd go through a series of game elements that I feel need to go away.

Lives - As mentioned in Zero Punctuation, the Lives system needs to go. Lives were created solely for coin-operated game machines as a way to prevent gamers from playing forever on one quarter. The developers needed a way to not only end the game session, but make the player insert more coins in order to keep playing.
As console gaming caught on, the lives system was combined with a Continue system as a way to increase challenge in games. Making the player complete the game with a limited number of tries made what would otherwise be a somewhat easy game suddenly have more difficulty.
As games have become more epic, and thus taking longer to beat, game developers have started to shy away from Lives. Yet some companies don't seem to grasp that the Lives system is no longer necessary. We have checkpoints and save points after each level to help the player complete the game, and artificial intelligence that create challenge. A Lives system just isn't needed to create challenge.

Health Bars - Nothing ruins the experience of a "realistic" shooter more than seeing brightly colored health packs laying on the ground. Maybe it's just me, but when I'm storming the beaches of Normandy, I don't want to see big health boxes scattered around. Thus I have been quite relieved and happy to see the newest trend going around: regenerating health. If you get hit, you just wait a few seconds and you will be back to full strength. But get hit too much in a short period of time, and you're dead.
In my opinion, that is the best way to go these days. At least in action games. RPGs will never get rid of their health system, nor should they. And I can see why games like Mario and Ratchet & Clank need health systems. But in action games, they're just obsolete. It was probably the first Halo game that really started the trend. But now I can't imagine playing a shooter without regenerating health. Heck, even Uncharted and Assassin's Creed use this new health system.

Random Battles - This only applies to RPGs, of course. But I hate random battles. Final Fantasy is by far the worst offender as far as random battles go. That isn't to say that other games don't abuse the system.
With Final Fantasy XII removing random battles in favor of MMORPG-style battles, I hope this is the start of games moving away from random battles. Nothing irritates me more than to be walking around, trying to complete a quest, only to be forced into a battle. I don't like random battles, and I want to choose when I fight. Wild ARMs 2 and beyond use a unique system that lets you cancel certain battles at the expense of an ECNG gauge. But because this gauge went down, you were eventually forced to fight. Which became an annoyance.

Fixed-level enemies - This also only applies to RPGs. But when I'm playing an RPG, I play for the story, first and foremost. I don't care about leveling up, battling, or the overall experience. I want the story. I think the story is the most important aspect of all games, but RPGs need the story more than anything. I don't play an RPG to "play" it, I play an RPG to experience the story.
Which is why I hate games that almost force you to level-up in order to beat certain enemies. This is almost all Japanese RPGs, and at least some American RPGs. The example of the way to do things has to be the Elder Scrolls series. In my first play through of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, I finished the main quest at around Level 6. The best part about it is the game doesn't force you to level up. All the enemies scale to your current level. If you level-up, the enemies do as well. Meaning the enemies are never too tough, and never too easy. Certain enemies only show up when you reach certain levels, which adds to the challenge. For example, I got to Level 10 in my second play through so I could get the Skeleton Key (a Daedric artifact), and I started seeing enemies I never saw before.
When I say "fixed-level enemies," I mean the kind who are always at a certain level, all the time. They always have fixed stats that rarely, if ever fluctuate. Meaning you must level up to progress, but when you have to backtrack to earlier areas, the enemies are complete push-overs to the point that you can kill an entire battalion of baddies with one move. RPGs would be much more fun if the enemies level and stats scaled along with yours. That way, later enemies aren't too overwhelming, while earlier enemies aren't so weak near the end.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading.