Keep some potions at the ready, because you will definitely know when you need them.

When you're playing most video games, you might not always be cognizant of everything that's going on. If you're too invested in what's happening onscreen, you might miss details from UI elements like your health bar. This is why many games employ some manner of warning when you're in dire straits, just to make sure you get the picture.

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Some games aren't satisfied with a quick beep or a random quip from your character, though. Some games really, really need to drive the point home. They need you to know, in no uncertain terms, that you are low on health, and you had better be concerned about that, or the game will give you a reason to be concerned about that.

The distinct "beep-boop beep-boop" of low health has existed in Pokemon games since the very first generation, with the klaxon sounding constantly until later generations where it only played twice, thankfully. However, in the generation five games, the developers decided to try a little experiment to give you a greater sense of urgency.

In Pokemon Black and White, when your Pokemon hits critical health, an entire song will start playing. Not only is this song quite tense, but it actually uses the usual low-health jingle as a backing beat. It also overrides all other BGM, even the triumphant song that plays when you get a Gym Leader down to their last Pokemon.

In The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, all four copies of Link share a single pool of hearts, which still plays the usual beeping sound that most Zelda games play when they get low. However, this game also uses a revive system, drawing on your Rupees to bring the Links back when they die in order to keep things a little balanced.

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Things get really tense when you're at low health and don't have enough Rupees to revive, which prompts the game to start playing a song that is just repetitive enough to be both alarming and irritating.

Luigi's health in all the Luigi's Mansion games is indicated by a large heart in the corner of the screen. In the first game, in particular, there's no audible warning from the meter itself, but instead, your warning comes from Luigi's body language: he's hunched over, trembling (more than usual), barely able to keep a grip on the Poltergust nozzle.

If you press the A button to have him call out for Mario, rather than his usual, curious call, he'll let out a shrieking cry for his brother. When Luigi is at low health, he's not just hurt, he's absolutely terrified.

Many of your important actions in the Gauntlet series are punctuated by the intonations of the narrator. From commending your bravery to announcing your level-ups to, for some reason, telling you not to chew food, he's always got a quip. But when the monsters start filing in, and you're taking on damage, the narrator doesn't beat around the bush.

He puts it in plain terms: "you are about to die." No injury, no knockouts, you are straight-up on the verge of death. Nine times out of ten, it's the last thing you want to hear in a situation where you're about to die.

While technically not a low "health" warning per se, we would be remiss not to include this classic staple of gaming trauma. 30 years on, and Sonic the Hedgehog still can't swim, which is why in nearly all of his games, when he spends too long underwater, that horrible song starts playing.

Even the simple bit-crushed drum beat is enough to strike fear into anyone's heart, more so as it speeds up. As if the digital version weren't bad enough, later Sonic games switched to full orchestral versions just to really drive home exactly how many seconds of life are left in Sonic's tiny lungs.

The Silent Hill games have always been more about the subtle route when it comes to conveying info to the player. The game doesn't feature an explicit life meter, instead employing a portrait of James that becomes progressively dirtier and more distorted as he's injured.

When he's at critical health, your controller begins vibrating in a slow, methodical pattern reminiscent of a heartbeat. As James gets closer to death, the vibration increases in speed, becoming pulse-pounding when he's on the verge of death.

Freedom Planet takes a lot of cues from the classic sidescrolling Sonic games, including a warning when you're running around somewhere with a distinct lack of oxygen. However, in one particular instance, Freedom Planet takes the drowning theme trope in a much different, arguably more intimidating direction.

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In the Final Dreadnought, when Brevon turns off the oxygen, the characters are forced to hold their breath in the vacuum. When the air meter gets low, rather than playing a theme, the music cuts out entirely and all you can hear is a steadily ticking clock, counting down to your imminent suffocation.

Like some other horror games, the Fatal Frame games convey low health warnings through the characters. Specifically, in the first Fatal Frame, when Miku is at low health, she'll start loudly panting in exhaustion. The element that makes this distinct from other games, however, is that the panting is ever-present.

Walking around? Panting. Navigating through menu options? Panting? Saving your game? Even then, she's still panting. Miku's exhaustion doesn't go away just because you're not looking at her. It's always there, a constant reminder that she's almost dead.

Being the early days of console gaming, NES games didn't have much in the way of UI warnings and effects, aside from staples like the low heart sound in the original Zelda. One notable exception to this was the official NES Rambo game.

When Rambo is low on health, the entire screen starts flashing a dark red color, and it doesn't stop until you die or get your health back. Putting aside how immensely annoying something like this is, it would also bug the game out if you put in the invincibility cheat code, making the flashing all but permanent.

In just about any kind of fiction or media, you can't beat the classic EKG as an indicator of imminent death, though in Trauma Center's case, it's not your imminent death that's the concern.

When your patient's health drops below critical levels, the heart monitor will become audibly louder, while your assistant will warn you to take immediate preventative measures to keep them alive, such as injecting a stabilizer. This can be incredibly tense on higher difficulties, as you could be dealing with constant EKG beeping and your assistant begging in your ear to do something nonstop.

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Having played a litany of video games since childhood, Daniel is an old school gaming fiend. He first got into the sphere in the age of the Nintendo 64, and has amassed a respectable personal library over the years, with his Steam library alone currently numbering over 600 games. Daniel enjoys researching his favorite games extensively, from their developmental histories to their narratives and characters. Recently, Daniel has been a regular game guide writer for Gamer Journalist, as writing gives him a chance to gab at length about his favorite topic.