In a lot of action games that use them, it feels like a time limit on how long your flashlight should be on is basically worthless. Usually, they deplete too slowly and recharge too fast, so what's the point? The only time this felt like it really worked as a horror concept was maybe Half-Life 2: Episode 1 with the prolonged dark zombie filled areas. I'm sure there are others, but Halo: Combat Evolved having a flashlight that went out after a minute of use? Why? Why not just give me unlimited flashlight. FEAR is a horror-ish game and it too had a time limit on prolonged flashlight, but the scary part about using it wasn't it going out, it was replica yelling out FLASHLIGHT.

Does this bother anyone else?

Just cheap way to make player feel under pressure.

That's (unfortunately) a general problem with depletable resources, etc.

Batteries don't last long, weapons' wear and tear is way too fast (FC 2), the effect of consuming food and water doesn't last long (in games where food consumption is a must to survive), leading to player characters constantly having to eat and drink, torches disappear after you extinguish them, even if they were in use only for seconds, instead of being able to pack them away for later use, again, etc., etc.

Not gonna lie, playing The Outer Worlds on the hardest difficulty is a slog, but the eat/drink/sleep mechanic was made extremely annoying by the fact that your stats were hit if they were below like maybe 90% instead of something more reasonable like 50%, so you were always debuffed if you didn't take a swig every ten minutes.

Agreed here. I recently got Skyrim: Anniversary Edition in which they included a "survival" mod. I never tried one of those so I thought why not. Turns out it got old fast, I guess some games just aren't made for this kind of thing.

More on topic, I do believe it can be fun if there's reason for it like the OP pointed out. Otherwise it's just another useless mechanic.

EDIT. Of course there are games that are made for this kind of thing, like "Project Zomboid" which is one of my favorite survival games ever.

because the devs of those games feel it's necessary your not wasting resources.
like they did by adding something useless like a flashlight in the first place!

many games create a none existing problem and give the player a solution.
and like a trained monkey the player accepts it's reward by pressing the right button.

years of research did go into this how to manipulate, train alter your thinking patrons.

I remember an old adventure game called Shadowgate, for the NES, in which you had a limited amount of torch light, and it running out was game over.

Incidentally, many games that have torches also have light spells, and when available, I pretty much always use the spell. Dungeon Master is a good example of this, to the point where torches are pointless (puzzles aside) unless you're soloing with a character who can't cast the light spell at the start. (The light spell is given to you on a scroll found on level 0, which is the starting level and the only one that does not require a light source to see well, so even if you're using only spells the game has told you about, you can still get away without ever using a torch to light the way.) (Also, I note that, in DM, a torch uses up a hand, whereas a light spell does not, plus casting light spells is good Wizard practice.) Reminds me of one of my many complaints about Ultima 7. In that game:
* If you don't eat food, you'll start taking damage, and eventually die. The same holds true of your companions, as well.
* Simply having the food isn't enough; you actually need to go into your inventory to use the food item. This means you need to constantly interact with the game's atrocious inventory system.
* Food isn't scarce enough for it to be a legitimate survival issue.

(Dungeon Master also has you eat food and drink water, but there the inventory system is *much* better, and you don't actually need to eat/drink that often.)

A better way of handling food in games that where food isn't meant to be scarce is to have food provide bonuses rather than having the lack of food cause damage and death. I hear Zelda: Breath of the Wild does this; there's probably older examples of this, but I can't think of any.

Yeah, everybody has a phone with a flashlight these days.

And even that has a timer on it too...

Not all games take place "these days".

Flashlights on games are useless because they don't include the everyone favorite SOS/strobe mode.

This can be simulated by rapid pressing of the key. Or a turbo mode.

Yeah, especially since they're typically reflective of some old goit's idea of a flashlight rather than the modern type that could blind someone in Peoria, Illinois from Austin, Texas. (Nearly 1600 km.)

Remember when batteries had to use those massive square cells and barely lasted 8 hours?

Such a mode could cause epileptic seizures in some people, and therefore there should be an option to disable them in any game that has them.

(I note that Cyberpunk 2077, on release, had some flashing lights in some sequences that actually *did* cause epileptic seizures, and at least one reviewer couldn't play through those sections because of this.)

If you weren't aware, there's a remake sold here.