Clearly hiding and healing is the most ridiculous and non-realistic (not that any healing method in games is massively realistic) however it's also the method that makes for the least breaks in gameplay and appeals to the higher number of people - who want to keep shooting and not looking aroud for health.
I don't care too much except when you see it used in the wrong type of game. For Uncharted, CoD, etc. I'm comfortable to crouch and heal (TBH I just take the view that, like in a film, I haven't actually been hit at all, or just lightly grazed and keep going) but when I play something like, say, Mass Effect, I want some form of high tech healing to be required, or if I play something Fallout 3 I want to have health packs, etc.
Mostly developers get it right, thankfully.
My favourite healing (out of games I've played) was Dark Corners of the Earth, where you have to essentially open the kit and your character goes through a protracted and slow healing application. Tense, really made you feel you were injured and sloping off somewhere to fix yourself, etc. On the other hand, with splints and bandages you were patching up broken limbs then running off!
In other words, the funny dynamic is that while games may make certain things feel more realistic, for example feeling you are in the middle of a huge firefight, they nonetheless remain games and actually massively unrealistic.
I wonder though, how a game would feel where if you got badly wounded or killed you had to literally go right back to the beginning and start again - i.e. the only way to win was to genuinely get through the whole thing without taking a bullet. I suspect there would be a small but interested market for such a title. In reality, a small firefight can last hours, because those involved are really trying to stay alive while win. This would be interesting to simulate I think vs trying to have firefights that feel real but in reality last like 15 to 20 minutes.
Try to be reasonable... its easier than you think...
