There have been quite a few shooters coming out in recent years that bragged about how their no HUD experience is going to bring an immersive experience for some of the most hardcore gamers. RDR2, Metro Exodus, and Battlefield, to name just a few.
But how about Overwatch? For those games that aim to imitate real life, the experience without HUD can be just the thing to take their adventure to the next level. Overwatch 2 is obviously not focusing on giving a real-life experience, but can the game be fun when played without HUD? Read on to see how my experience felt!
How to Play Overwatch 2 Without HUD
You can remove HUD both on PC and on consoles. To remove HUD simply go to Options – Controls – Interface and under Miscellaneous see what button is bound to toggle the HUD on and off (or UI as it’s described in the game). In most cases for consoles, it’s the square button and for PC it’s the “Alt+Y” for EU keyboards and Alt+Z for US ones.
Related: How to Check Your MMR in Overwatch 2?
You can switch between having a HUD or no HUD whenever you like, so in case you start a game without it, you are not bound by your decision.
First Hand Experience Playing Overwatch 2 With no HUD
I hopped on and off of Overwatch since Season 3 (Overwatch 1) and I can say that I’ve seen it all (or most of it). Different strategies, trolling tactics, various combos, and new approaches to old heroes. But, I have to admit that playing without a HUD didn’t come to my mind.
At first glance, when you are waiting for those doors to unlock and let you battle the enemy team, you don’t feel that much has changed. You have a clearer picture without those tiny distractions lurking around from each corner of your screen. However, I would soon learn that those “distractions” are more important than I thought.
No Chrosshair, No Problem?
For DPS I went in as Soldier 76 and Cassidy and the first thing I noticed when facing off the enemy team is that I can’t tell anyone’s HP. Ok, this is bad since I can’t know who I should focus on. And then came the second problem, how can I focus on people when I have no crosshair?
I know, aiming without a crosshair can sound really bad but it’s not. There’s a lot of history of CS or Battlefield matches where experienced sniper players kill enemies without zooming in. Long-time FPS players get used to the fact that the crosshair is always in the middle of the screen and they kinda have this “mental crosshair” and even ignore the real one. So even though this is an obstacle, it’s not an impossible one.
So, I can say that it’s not totally unplayable without in-game sights, but it does make the game much more difficult.
Healer’s Hell
On the other hand, the no HUD experience isn’t so good for healers. Since you don’t see anyone’s HP in the game, you can’t tell who you should heal. I mean you can listen to the voice commands or voice chat and try to quickly figure out who is who and help them out but that’s really a hard obstacle to overcome when we are thinking of a game that has many clutch situations.
Mercy, Moira, and Lucio are the easiest healers to play here since they don’t need to aim (or aim particularly well to heal their teammates). But it can easily happen that you are healing a full hp hero next to an almost-dying one.
Moreover, you can’t tell your own HP as well, and shield heroes such as Reinhardt and Brigitte can’t tell how much HP their shields have.
Extra Problems
There are some general problems that affect every hero and role in the game. Not being able to tell the enemy’s HP really cripples the teamplay since people naturally go for the lowest HP enemy so they can knock them out of the game ASAP and get an advantage.
Another thing is that you can’t tell your cooldowns. For basic abilities, you’ll hear a sound when they come back online so you might be able to work around that, but for ulti you would have to keep spamming the keybind that notifies your teammates if your ultimate is ready or not.
When it comes to interacting with teammates and seeing how they’re doing, you’re at a disadvantage here as well. You can’t see the scoreboard and you can’t see the chat. This doesn’t allow you to check if anyone in your team has switched their hero, who has the ultimate available, or if they are messaging you about something.
What are the Advantages of Playing Overwatch 2 With no HUD?
Playing Overwatch 2 without HUD is certainly a unique and fun experience, and it does bring out that pure game mode feeling where you get a sense of being in the game. It puts out beautiful graphics in the foreground and if you try it you will really experience Overwarch in a new way.
However, due to the no HUD mode being extremely impractical, I would suggest only playing it in some fun game mods or arcade games when you are not under the pressure to win. Personally, I connected with my friends via a voice chat, we all turned off our HUD and played against a team of AI. This way, we got to have an amazing game without feeling pressured or even trolled by enemy players.
We hope you enjoyed our article. For more content on Overwatch see our guide about how to use aim assist legacy mode and our article about whether “On Fire” is coming back to the game. Like us on Facebook to get more exciting gaming news in your feed every day.
