In its most basic state rust is a first-person shooter with survival/crafting elements. You need to collect resources such as wood, stone and ores to craft weapons and build your base. So far so good, seems like fun right? Wrong!



Never mind the wolves and bears roaming around ready to eat your delicious hams the game also boasts the most dangerous animal around, man. People online generally behave like psychotic trolls, especially younger folk. This has been true for a long time and really wouldn’t phase me one bit (I’ve been playing online fps since the quake1 days). Except in rust there is an added element common to many survival games… loot! Loot brings this game to life, resources take time to gather, tools and weapons need resources to be crafted. The urge to skip the resource gathering aspect and just roam around trying to kill other players is huge and makes for some very tense moments when you are filled with freshly farmed resources trying to return to your shack to smelt ores and craft weapons. You know they are out there, roaming and lurking waiting for an unsuspecting player to light a torch to better see his way home only to get shot in the face and see his precious loot taken from him.

There is an added dimension to some survival games which is base building, in rust this is particularly important because there are ways to used weapons and tools to break your walls and reach your carefully placed boxed full of your hard-earned loot. Basically, there is a game in game feeling when building a base. Players will go out of their way to create new designs to make it hard for raiders to get inside.

Now, an honest review must start with the fact that this game was released in late 2013 and has yet to leave the early-access stage on steam. However, updates are frequent and the game is still thriving with a large enough player base to fill a boatload of servers. That being said, the basic flow and pace of the game feels right (to me) for a survival game, not to slow not too fast.

First let’s consider the map/world where you play the game. There are two modes, a pre-made and a procedurally generated one. I’ve focused on playing the procedural map servers (I like switching up) so this review will be largely geared towards this type of map. Before I get into it I need to explain a little about server wipes. Servers can’t handle an infinite number of bases, weapons and tools so they wipe from time to time, resetting everything and everyone to zero. This is important because my first experience with rust was awful, I logged on to an official server with about 150 players out of 300 max. I could not for the life of me get anything going without getting shot. After some attempts I switched to a community managed server with about 20 people out of 100 that had just been wiped the day before. I farmed resources, hunted animals, built my base, crafted better tools and some guns, caught an airdrop for some awesome weapons and only died a couple of times to other players. I feel that, with the usually toxic nature of online games facepunch should “direct” newer players to community servers with low population so they can experience the game without getting shot in the face with an ak-47 while standing totally naked farming some wood with a rock.

What was I talking about? Oh right, the map. The map is great, the procedural one obviously changes every time the server is wiped (weekly, by-weekly or monthly are some of the common wipe-schedules) and is rich enough to warrant exploration. There are monuments very fairly spread throughout the map in which you can find some precious loot (like rifle bodies to craft your ak-47 or a bolt action rifle). These monuments are very well designed and the post-apocalyptic feel is really cool and eerie. The landscape is rich and the biomes add diversity. The animals however are a bit repetitive and seem to have extra-natural powers and travel through rocks (something to do with the game engine I’ve been told).

The gameplay is, as I said, pretty fluid, the shooting itself is not the best but doesn’t seem like a slouch specially if you consider some of the other early access shooters out there (looking at you H1Z1: KOTK). The aim-down-sights mechanic is by now a staple in FPS and the fact that you have no cross-hair in this game adds a bit of depth and importance to it. Gun accuracy and recoil appears well balanced (patches sometimes balance weapons to ensure fairer exchanges) so that there is a nice progression between the craftable weapon systems. Hitboxes feel right and the bullet drop mechanic doesn’t get in the way too much and in fact adds some depth (you need to lead your target) and rewards players with better hunting skills other than just point and click. There is one thing that I feel is a bit off which is the player model when moving and running and being hit. Playing the game at 1080p with mid settings at 60+fps watching a guy run (and trying to hit him) feels jagged and sketchy. When you hit a player repeatedly it looks like the animation repeats itself and results in an overall weird motion.

As I said base building is kind of like a game in the game. The build menu interface is very simple and intuitive allowing for even the noobest of players to quickly build a decent shack. There are dedicated YouTube channels, forums and software programs (such as fortify) to aid in base design. Base destroying (raiding) tools seem to me a bit out of whack, specially rockets that can, with four shots, obliterate four entire walls due to splash damage mechanics. But I understand that if bases were unraidable the game would die from the moment everyone got a decent base (which still happens sometimes in lower population servers with mostly solo players or duos).

Playing this game has been both fun and nerve wracking. I myself prefer games that make me nervous, there needs to be risk involved in every decision. Rust does just that. This game has given me online multiplayer experiences that I feel only this genre and this game in particular can provide. I have sneaked inside a foe’s base, only to find myself stuck inside and have him throw pumpkins at me to keep me alive while he laughed gleefully through open mic. His fun didn’t last long however as some fully geared roamers happened to pass by his base and, listening to my despair (I was trying to break stuff to get out) decided this base was big enough to warrant their attention and so proceeded to use the flamethrower to burn it down and set me free in the process. I have logged into a near empty server early Saturday morning to have a guy type in all chat if someone wanted an AK-47 that he had just picked up from the airdrop. Doubting his intentions, I stripped myself of all my gear (you never know who is listening) and agreed to meet him. He gave me the rifle alright except the only other player on the server quietly observed us and tracked us back to my base where he waited for me to open the code-locked door to shoot me in the back. Luckily an airlock (a sequence of two doors placed so you never fully open your base to door campers) prevented him from gaining access to my base. He was not deterred though and found a way, through my land mines, to jump inside my courtyard where I had placed a large furnace to smelt my farmed ores. When I re-spawned I looked through a window to find him there, he promptly shot me in the face. In panic and horror, I re-spawned again in a sleeping bag I had placed outside my base and rushed to try and close the front door effectively closing him inside. I did so! Then he starts using the open mic, laughing he says that he got stuck between the furnace and the wall and said that either I help him out and open doors so he can leave or he will try to hack and shoot his way out and even implied he had explosives in case he need to break a door or wall. I agreed to this, took the necessary precautions (changed loot to another more secure room) and jumped naked into the courtyard. We managed it. I called GG and he promptly proceeded to give me half of his loot. He said it was rare that someone got raided and kept cool and recognized that this is a game. He had over 3,000 hours in the game and by meeting him I had the chance to participate in some epic 3 on 6 shooting wars and raid some massive bases that alone I wouldn’t even dream.

To conclude I will say this: every kid, boy or girl, over 13 should play this game. Why? Because this game teaches you some of the most valuable lessons in life. Don’t trust anyone but yourself yet you need to make connections to survive and thrive. If you want to succeed you will need to put in the hours (long hours!) and lastly, people will always be trying to get what you have earned so always be vigilant and never sleep! Have fun.