About the realism of hardcore mode on Fallout: New Vegas...
I think it'll be excellent. I found the "unrealism" of Fallout 3 actually detracts from the game a bit. How is it that I can carry around a rifle, plasma rifle, shotgun, nuke launcher, flame sword, and more plus full ammo? And food? Honestly if they want to limit me to carrying 2 or 3 guns so I can actually hold ammo and food/water - and every 30mins I need to take a swish of water... I think it's pretty cool. It'll really put you in the game. I've never been a big fan of huge diversity, I like to specialize so I just hope that with the limited equipment you can really pimp it out. Maybe mod your favorite guns for better damage/accurace/rate of fire or whatever else.
I played the Sims years and years ago for about a week... it was fun at first to design the house and play a little while to get some "cool" new stuff and then it became super duper tedious having to tell the stupid ass sim to go to the bathroom, go eat, go sleep... that's just boring, especially since I would expect a simulated human to do these things on their own as needed, plus the fact that he had to shit 5 times before I had to take a pee irl.
Then Demon's Souls has it's own form of realism in that you die pretty easily, you have a stamina bar that drains appropriately for running, for swinging your weapon, for blocking... Granted you don't have to eat food (well, eating grass gains HP) but considering you spend half your time as a soul it kinda makes sense.
So really, it's not that too real is tedious, it's more the faked realism that gets tedious.