Off With Their HUDS!

Gamasutra has a piece looking at the move to unite player and gameworld by removing the HUD from the gameplay space. From the article: "Many elements found on a typical HUD are there not out of necessity, but out of convention; they represent a sort of 'info overkill' that, for the vast majority of players, has no impact on gameplay at all. For every piece of information you offer the player, ask, 'Is this information essential to the game experience?' In doing so, you might find that you don't need to bombard the player with quite as much data as you once thought you did."

Comments

HL Series

[rwven]

I think the Half-Life series very well understands this...
-You get a weapons menu when you try to scroll through weapons but otherwise it's not there
-You get the flashlight in the top right
-You get health, armor and ammo

Then you have games like Deus Ex: Invisible War.
-Half the stinkin screen is HUD. To make matters worse, the HUD is elyptical so it creates this circle in the center of your screen that is the only useful part of your video display...

Nuff said.

Red Orchestra!

[vertinox]

How many times do I see articles that might as well be talking about Red Orchestra. They basically have removed all crosshairs, ammo counts, and health stastics.

All information is through visual, sound, or textual cues.

Example1: If you are low on stamina, your guy breathes heavy.
Example2: To find out how much ammo you have, reload and you'll get a message that says, your clip is heavy etc.
Example3: You don't get cross hairs. If you want to aim, you hit ironsites and it brings you guy up to your eyelevel and you use the 3d model to aim.

Very fun... Very realistic... Prolly the best WWII sim out there and these guys are an indie company.