Rust
Facepunch Studios
Like most gamers who have played Rust, I have both good and bad memories of playing Rust. Actually, let me back up—Rust was one of the first survival games that I played, years ago before it exited Steam’s Early Access program in February of 2018.
It was pretty barebones back then, a shadow of what it has blossomed into today. But I could tell that if the game’s developer kept updating it, it had some serious potential. One thing that has always stood out about Rust was how good its building system was. Building pieces almost always snapped together just right and made the all-important base-building aspect pretty hassle-free. That is if you didn’t get killed in the process.
Rust is one of the original games that featured a player’s avatar waking up buck-naked on a beach (which was itself always on a procedurally-generated island) and having to scrounge around for resources from their surroundings. It’s also a game that originally put the “T” into toxic, as in the toxic community. Nine times out of ten, if you were a freshly spawned survivalist and you ran into other players, they’d attack you on sight. Therefore, gathering enough resources in order to construct your first starter base was of utmost importance.
I had a lot of fond memories of playing Rust with gaming buddies. We’d spawn in and try to locate each other by indicating different landmarks to each other. If we found each other before getting killed by other players (a big feat in and of itself), we’d process to gather as many resources as we could in the shortest time possible in order to build a little base.
If we managed to do that, we’d usually have some decent weapons by then. Being thusly armed, it was amazing how other player’s attitudes would change—all of a sudden, the kill-on-sight (KOS) thing became must rarer. It was like going to a real-life gun rally where everybody is strapped up with guns; there are no problems at all between folks and everyone is on their best behavior.
Playing Rust is like a real-time version of one of those addictive “one more turn” turn-based games that keep you up until the wee hours of the morning. You and your friends always had just one more thing you had to add to your base to make it more defensible, or you had to acquire a certain resource so that you could build a specific weapon that you were striving for. Rust would literally keep us up until the morning sun was on the horizon, in fact, it’s the second most played game in my Steam library—it’s basically cracknip.
I hadn’t played Rust in a couple of years and a friend and I wondered what changes had been made. After all, its developer (which I believe is a one-man operation) is one of the most active of any game we’ve played.
After choosing a server and jumping in, we noticed right away that Rust now has modular cars that you can build. That was a pretty cool thing for us to discover. What were didn’t expect was the fact that players can also build helicopters from scrap metal as well. This brought a whole new dimension to raiding bases because you could fly over them and have your friends bail out right onto their rooftops. This makes for some pretty devious strategies.
There are also other new things such as all sorts of new weapons, weapon attachments such as new scopes and lasers, and even night vision goggles. There’s also a handy new gardening system for all of the green thumbs out there who like to grow their own food.
Rust has come a long way since I last played it. There are plenty of new features to be excited about, I just don’t have the time to play it as much as I used to anymore—it can be a serious time sink. But for those who like survival/crafting/building games, have lots of time on their hands, and can put up with its notoriously toxic community, there is always some fun to be had with Rust.
SCORE: 78%
Rust has some pretty good looking graphics that make its survival gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
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