Ok, now this I can work with.

I agree, No country for Old Men vs Hurt Locker would be very debatable on what is what. You also bring in DMC3 and NG, both of which have very satisfying combat systems. The thing is though, the gameplay blueprint in both is still very similar. Meanwhile regen health vs regen health changes the gameplay completely.

As I mentioned above, with regenerating health each encounter is completely discret. Even decisions during an encounter become discrete. You try something, it's is a terrible idea, so most of the time you can jsut hide behind a wall and try again later. Considering in most games, most not all, enemies don't have regenerating health you can even just continuously take bad actions without being penalized for them. Then at the end of an encounter you are back up to full. Think of it as having inifnite health in a level, except for the small period of time where you are getting shot. That allows you to do all sorts of mistakes, because hey, you got inifnite health.

Now without the regeneraitng health, you don't have that. Whatever you do, has a consequence. You can't just do someting bad, and then a few seconds later it's like you never attempted it. There is very real punishment because you have a finite health for a given level. Each time something really wrong is done, that finite health decreases. So the actual game part is finding a way through a level so that you end with a positive amount of health. There are so many countless times I'd end a level with something like 5 health in many different games. Furthermore, having low health, and knowing you cant press a button, wait, and get full health, brings a lot more tension to every encounter.

In your example, DMC3 and NG, you basically have the same level of care. With the movie analogy it's like having good acting, a good thoughtful story to tell, etc. all of which are very close to each other such that comparisons do become subjective. However the difference on gameplay mechanics between regen and no regen is huge. You can't even compare the two because the dynamics are completely different. There is no tension, there is no health "rationing" as I'd call it, there is no point of thinking of a creative way to face an encounter. Basically those are what is lost when you go from packs to regen. What you gain though is insignificant. In fact you don't gain it, the developers do. They gain the peace of mind that you will always have full health each encounter. So they stop carefully planning out their encounters, and just like with linear level design, encounters become monotonous.  All of the sudden there isn't the whole "let's put this BAMF right here because it will reduce their health a certian amount if the player doesn't know what he is doing" instead it's "let's put 4 of these BAMFs because the guy will have a full health afterwards no matter what and then we can have 4 BAMFs and 2 ants."

The dynamic is completely different, nothing is gained besides accessibility and lazy development, meanwhile tons of core aspects of gaming are lost. That is why regen is such a terrible mechanic.

Edit: Basically the gameplay dynamic of games with health regen come down to finding a chest-high wall to hide behind for a few seconds without someone shooting you. Or if that is not possible, maneuvering the baddies in a circle so that you can create such a position.

Edit2: Having the regenning health is liek having a constant climax, since you will always encounter a large amount of enemies. There is no need for a buildup (having a few small enemies here and there to harass you), a climax (few huge battles to really wear you down) and a resolution (the few enemies at the end that might kill you by accident). Think about it, all other media has that. Novels have it, music has it, movies have it, etc. Any given book that is consistently action/steamy sex, any movie that is consistently action, or music that has that climax spread throughout the entire song, is considered bad.

Good response. I completely agree that regenerative health doesn't punish players for making bad decisions, atleast to the same extent of games with finite health bars. Not much debate from me on that issue.

I think your other point can primiarily be summed up by saying that regenerative health gives rise to lazy developers who are more focused on making technically impressive levels with large fire fights rather than focusing on strategic fights that rely on balanced level design. I definitely recognize why developers would take this route, but it is ultimately their decision about what they intend to do. Point being, I could actually see where a FPS could have regenerative health and still take these things into account (strategy, level design, smart AI). In the same way, I could see a FPS with a finite health bar that did not create a game that took these gameplay mechanics into account. With this argument, it sounds to me like you have more of a problem with lazy developers who implement their choices poorly rather than regenerative health in itself. I can see where regenerative health might give developers an incentive to make those choices you criticized (valuing large fire fights over strategy and linearity over openness), but it does not force them to make those decisions.

I very much agree, the developer is the one that decides how they want to proceed with the design.

I also wanted to add how health packs also promote better level design. Since the player has to actively find health, instead of having health passively, the packs give players a lot of incentive to explore the level more. That means that unless the packs were literally in front of the player every time (and the players would really rip the devs a new one for that), developers can't create a linear level to the extent that we are seeing in some modern games.

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