"Rust is one of the most influential titles in the history of PC gaming and Early Access, and while its hardcore gameplay and toxic community make it unsuitable for some, I fully recommend it for those who can put in the hours needed to succeed."
Rust requires a massive time commitment for those who wish to be more than prey for high-end players, and solo players who are not willing to invest upward of five hours each day will struggle to remain competitive on official servers.
While this level of commitment is possible, and many solo players have run rings around groups of inexperienced players, Rust is meant to be played with others, and solo players will frequently find themselves the target of clans who have no qualms about destroying the hard work of a solo player just for the fun of it.
While some boosted community servers make solo leveling easier, they are often Pay2Win, with players being given the option to purchase top-end armor and weapons with real-world currency, the literal definition of Pay2Win.
To ensure no single player (or group of players) becomes too powerful, most Rust official and community servers frequently wipe, with weekly, biweekly, and monthly wipes being the most common.
Rust utilizes a hybrid monetization model that revolves around the sale of cosmetic skins (PC and Console) and item bundles (PC), which allow players to craft DLC-exclusive items that offer no competitive advantage, such as swimming pools, instant cameras, megaphones, and pianos.
Like all items in Rust, crafted DLC items can be shared with teammates (or looted by enemies), which allows everyone to join in the fun, even if they do not own the DLC in question.
The Instant Camera (Sunburn Pack DLC) allows players to take in-game screenshots and display them in photo frames around their base, a great way to remember epic battles and fun times with friends.
While Rust has not always been the best-looking game, and for many years it was the ugly duckling of the survival genre, as of 2023 Rust on PC is visually stunning (for the genre) and manages to do so without taking any major performance hits.
Unfortunately, Rust Console Edition is another story, and returning to it after playing on PC felt like taking a step backward, with muddy low-resolution textures and a general lack of optimization. Rust Console Edition looks and feels worse than Rust did in 2013, most likely due to the developers trying to support 8th-generation hardware, which is widely accepted to be unsuitable for open-world survival games that require more powerful hardware than similarly sized titles from other genres.
Any game that allows players to design bases will result in performance drops on lower-end hardware, with even relatively well-optimized titles such as Conan Exiles struggling to render very large bases on moderately high-end setups.
Rust is one of the only survival games with next to no PvE content and offers little in the way of intelligent AI to easily enable server owners to create their own PvE experiences. While there are wild animals and NPCs who issue rudimentary missions, attempting to play unmodded Rust as a purely PvE experience is not all that enjoyable and is comparable to buying a prime steak just for the butter sauce.
While the developers have done little to encourage a PvE community to form, Rust remains one of the most popular survival games on PC while also performing well on console, and thanks to a thriving content creator community, it is likely to remain in the public eye for many years to come.
The Rust community is horrible, and I do not use that word lightly. While all PvP game communities have elements of toxicity, Rust takes this to the extreme, and finding even one or two players per server who are not toxic is an immense challenge.
I am well used to PvP games, but Rust is the only one where even the newest player will as soon stab you in the back as look at you. While the thrill of not being able to trust anyone is fun at first, knowing that everyone wants to kill you, even when they don’t have to, gets old fast.
Starting fresh on a new server, I was killed no less than six times by fully geared players, many of whom did not even bother to loot my body of its worthless belongings, instead opting to dump and despawn them just to cause frustration.
While Rust is toxic, many people just want to have a good time, and making friends is possible for those willing to take the risk.
Players are given no control over the appearance of their character, with each player being given a random appearance based on their Steam64 ID. While this is a nice idea, it does not do much to aid immersion and, in some instances, leads to unfortunate cases of gross misogyny and racism, with immature players making offensive remarks about character appearances.
Some players have found ways to influence ↪ their character’s look, but the only sure way to change it is to use a new Steam account and hope for the best.
While sharing many similarities, Rust (PC) and Rust Console Edition are on divergent development paths. The developers confirmed that some PC updates will not make their way to Rust Console Edition and that it will follow a separate roadmap that may contain features and updates absent from the PC version.
Rust was one of the first mainstream games to allow players to “bare it all,” and while there is something to be said for starting naked and afraid on the beaches of a hostile land, there is no need to make everyone naked.
I would honestly rather they had stuck to underwear and lowered the age rating, which would open Rust up to a much wider demographic, many of whom feel uncomfortable with full-frontal nudity.
While the PC client allows players to censor nudity, Rust Console Edition removes it entirely, with all players starting the game in their underwear.
Pictured: Swimwear “underwear” skins are available as part of the Sunburn DLC pack.
Rust loads incredibly slowly on PC, and this is never more evident than when playing on a custom server, where load times can exceed five minutes, even when installed on a top-end NVMe drive that can load massive games such as Ark Survival Evolved in seconds.
Curiously, this issue does not affect Rust Console Edition, which allows me to connect to any official server in under 20 seconds.
Rust allows players to craft and repair a wide selection of vehicles, from small utility rides to powerful attack helicopters. Unfortunately, Rust Console Edition currently lacks most means of transportation, including rideable horses, helicopters, and modular cars, which will not be added anytime soon due to hardware limitations of 8th-generation consoles.
Rust is a survival game developed by Facepunch Studios, Double Eleven( Rust Console Edition) and published by Facepunch Studios, it released on 15 April 2024, and is available on PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
Rust is in active development, and both PC and Console versions receive content updates, performance enhancements, balancing tweaks, and bug-fix patches regularly.
Rust supports:
Rust only supports cross-play between PlayStation and Xbox consoles at this time.
Rust offers the following matchmaking options:
The Rust in-game store sells:
Premium currency is only available for Rust Console Edition at this time.
Rust supports the following peripherals:
Rust is rated PEGI 16+ and contains:
Rust is a fantastic game, but it is not for everyone, and I do not recommend it for those with limited free time or who struggle to engage with highly toxic communities.
We found Rust to be a good game, meaning it is likely to be enjoyable for most players, despite having a few areas that could be improved upon.
"Myth of Empires, at the time of its early access launch, was the most exciting new survival game in several years; however, in 2024, it is "just another survival game" in a sea of better survival games, and while its legal issues with Snail Games are a thing of the past, the damage has been done, and many gamers are weary of the developers, and likely will remain so for some time. ."
"Duckside is a less polished version of Deadside with bare-bones base building, worse visuals, horrifically bad gunplay and playable ducks."
"Sunkenland is a decent game with plenty of potential; however, the developers' insistence on doing things "their way" will be its downfall long before it leaves early access, if it manages to leave early access at all."
