Dj
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Going "HUD"less
Added by Dj on July 29, 2008
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While tuning to the tons of E3 coverage I noticed one trend in a lot of games. It seems that the new thing in games is to get rid of all HUD elements. It seems health bars, endurance bars, ammo clips, and radars are being done away with in favor of a more cinematic experience. I'm not really sure how I feel about the issue. While having no bars cluttering up your view seems like a good idea, I'm not sure whether its really any use. I'll admit it certainly helps presenting a more cinematic experience but I like being able to know everything at a glance. Lets looks at two examples:

Doom

Doom
Doom
Here's the classic FPS Doom. The one thing I notice when looking at this screen is all of the stuff at the bottom. While this game is trying to go after this horror aesthetic, I find that the on screen control panel kind of breaks the whole illusion. It's cool that you have everything that you could ever need to know on one screen but I don't find it very pleasing to the eye. For me is serves as a constant reminder that I'm playing a game instead of being immersed in a story or environment. Now I realize that this is completely out dated but I'm bringing this up to show the extreme contrast between Doom and the next game.




Dead Space

Dead Space
Dead Space
 Dead Space is the game that made me think of this whole topic. Your health bar is displayed on you back and your ammo is displayed whenever you see an enemy. That's pretty cool. However you are still showing the same information but just in a different way. I think it's only good if you can incorporate the concept naturally in the context of the game. If you're trying to do this with a fighting game and having your health bar appear on a billboard in the background then that's just dumb. I think that only certain games will benefit from this, if everyone starts doing it then there is no point. 



If I had to pick one over the other I would pick the "HUD"less approach. However if too many games start to try and incorporate this concept then this concept will lose all of its appeal to me. 
Related to: Doom, Dead Space, Health

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