Rust is a multiplayer online sandbox game that was created by Face Punch Studios, who are also the creators of Gary’s Mod. How does the massive world of Rust compare with similar games like Minecraft?
Gameplay
You begin your Rust experience with little to no supplies, with which you must improve your tools and forge a place to live. Sounds a little like Minecraft, right? Rust differs in that it is an MMO where survivability is the key. If you can survive the wildlife roaming the game, you’ll be faced with zombies who spawn at specific points on the map. If this isn’t enough for you, you must also deal with the game’s PVP element. Picture yourself spending hours collecting your resources when suddenly; BAM, another player comes along, kills you, takes your hard-earned resources and leaves you with nothing. Maddening, right? Face Punch Studios have gone to town to ensure that the PVP in Rust is as intense as possible by including air drops of must-have resources that occur at random locations, for players to fight amongst themselves for. There must be a certain number of players on the server to allow for these air drops to happen, guaranteeing maximum bloodshed.
A particularly unique feature of the game is ‘Sleepers’. When you log out of the game, your character is left lying on the floor, a sitting duck for the attack of other players. This has not been before attempted by other companies. You must either cleverly hide your character before logging out, or spend valuable time collecting coveted resources in order to build a house to hide away in while you are offline.
There are many ways to regenerate your health, some being more efficient than others. Either using the hand-crafted medi-packs, or more upgraded versions like first aid kits. Due to the bleed mechanism you need one of these with you constantly. One hit can cause you to begin bleeding, leading to a slow death. Food is also a crucial function. Without this you will starve to death (surprise, surprise). To gather food, you must hunt wildlife roaming around the map. But if you’re hoping for a delicious hunk of bacon from a pig, you’re out of luck – hilariously, regardless of what it is you’ve killed, you receive chicken breast every time!
Light and dark is a prominent theme, which comes into play with the day and night cycle. You may think you’re safe from others players when you’re hidden in the darkness of night, but there’s a five minute period during the night cycle in which you are plunged into pitch blackness, and forced to use light sources such as a campfire or torch. This exposes you to enemy players who are attracted to the light, like moths to a flame. Face Punch Studios have once again fine-tuned Rust’s PVP experience.
Crafting
Crafting is much as you would expect from the genre; the resources you gather can be crafted into other useful materials, such as axes or guns, even C4. To do so, you must first gather wood and stone to build a forge before collecting the resources required for the specific item. Your forges and crafting tables, and other such equipment, are reusable. Thank goodness for that!
It doesn’t stop there; you can even make buildings, whether you want a battle fort or a humble home. If you can collect the resources, and defend them from attacking players, you can build walls and roofs for your house, which you can expand and customise to your leisure. You are free to unleash your creativity on the positioning of your walls, rotating them into place to form the shape of your building. Whether you want a bungalow or a multi-story plaza, if you can collect the materials, then your dream home awaits.
To craft new tools and weapons, you must first go to a town where you will find blue prints. You can also get these by killing zombies, although not every zombie drops a blue print. This means grinding until you find the print that you want. This is not an easy task, as zombies are the hardest enemy to survive. As if that is not enough, there’s radiation within the towns which eats away at your health if the radiation meter gets too high. You can defend yourself by creating radiation suits, or by taking “rad” pills, granting you enough time to go about your business without taking unnecessary damage.
PVP
The PVP aspect of the game can be overwhelming and ruthless on new players (or ‘Bambies’, as they’re unofficially called in the game). When faced with a more seasoned player who has had time to acquire better equipment, a new player with no such advantage does not stand a chance. ‘Bambies’ are often the victim of sport killing, and will be gunned, hacked or bashed down repeatedly, stolen from, and therefore prevented a chance to improve.
And remember that beautiful house you made? Your resources which have been lovingly stashed away, safe and sound, are not quite as secure as you think. Your house may be the target of ‘Raiding’. Wooden and even metal doors can be broken down one way or another, allowing enemy players access to your house and your precious resources.
Overall Thoughts and Opinions.
Face Punch Studios have been inspired by Minecraft and Day-z, which manifests itself in different aspects throughout the game. Rust itself is, overall, fun and keeps you on your toes, but it does start to feel repetitive when gathering resources and repeatedly being slaughtered in your “bambie” phase can become frustrating. At the same time, though, the constant threat of death or invasion from other players means you must remain focused and often have to rebuild. Whether you find this entertaining or tedious is down to your own perception of the experience.
It can be a lot of fun, plotting the perfect location for the construction of your house; somewhere suitably away from enemy eyes. However, make sure you’re certain that your chosen location is right for you – once a wall is placed, you can’t remove it again unless you get your hands on some C4, which is only available from a random air drop. And you’ll be pitched against other, potentially stronger players who have their eyes on that drop.
Even though the inclusion of “sleepers” is an interesting one, the game never informs you that your character will remain in game when you have logged out (so now you guys know!). ‘Bambies’ who are unaware of this feature will find themselves logging onto their game, having lost their resources, with no idea why.
I was disappointed to find that if you don’t log in for three days or more, your hand-constructed building will start to erode, and eventually delete it. Obviously, this means that if you are not committed enough to log on regularly, or you go on holiday or are busy for a period of time, your game will suffer because of it. The foundations and pillars of eroded buildings remain, littering the scenery with the skeletons of unused buildings left behind by inactive players.
The game is still in development and there are aspects of the game that are at fault and cause the environment to look unattractive, but I would recommend this to committed survivalist players.
Get into the early access here
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