Started playing without the HUD in Fallout 3 and continued it in New Vegas and am curious if anyone else plays that way as well.

Makes game play more challenging since you can't see remaining health or enemy locations on the compass, and there's no cross-hair to show you where the bullets are going to go. Combine that with hard and hardcoe mode and the game is 100X more entertaining.

You are insane. :goodjob:

Do you use the iron sights aiming mode? I might try this (assuming you can turn it off on the 360), but it just seems nuts not knowing how hurt you are. I don't want to open the pip-boy constantly as some sort of replacement. I'm all for making this game more interesting/challenging.

yea, just listen to your heartbeat for low measures, sleep every other day, drink plenty of fluids (water) and kill many bighorns south of Novac and eat plenty of steak. and buy a scope gun for accuracy from afar.......

Yeah I use iron sights, and you can turn it off on 360. Generally you only have to check HP after getting hit by some kinda explosive. But this puts more of a need on not getting hit so you'll have to check it less than you might think.

I have the cross hairs off but haven't tried playing with no hud at all. Sounds interesting. Have to give it a try.

Like the OP, I have been playing this way since Fallout 3. It's not as difficult as some people think it is. It increases the immersion a ton. You can actually role play instead of play it like a video game, where you take everything not labeled in red, and then know to "sneak" when it is. Pro tip: when you want to take specific things, use your aim down sights to aim at it. You have to listen to conversations and use your brain to find people and places. Your pip boy actually becomes more useful as your GPS device and your "heart rate monitor." Just set the game to normal difficulty [hardcoe] and role play. Try it. Give yourself some time to adjust.

I find picking items up and activating objects a little bit fiddly without the crosshairs. The PipBoy does however provide all essential information, it's a shame some quests rely heavily on quest markers =(

you cannot know what level of skill you need to lockpick, to hack and maybe certain message boxes won't appear, making the game impossible to progress...

Sounds like fun, but wouldn't it make ED-E's perk useless? I think the point about skill level requirements for locks/hacks would be annoying. Not knowing if I was hidden or not might make for a lot of reloads when picking pockets/stealing.

Just gotta use your head a little with the sneaking. Make sure you're behind the target, listen for footsteps and try to predict their route. And when they start shooting - they've seen you.
As for the hacking and lock picking, if you invest points in them regularly you shouldn't have a problem, and if you don't then you're really not concerned with it anyway. And once those 2 reach 50, and you still can't hack/pick something, it's pretty easy to figure out what level they are.

ocelot222 beat me to it.