Rust is a brutal game, a digital hell populated by beings who bask in barbarism. Everything starts with a stone, a large stone that becomes an extension of the body, a Kubrickian symbol of evolution, a tool for eating, building, growing and stealing. Stealing everything possible from the dead and their homes, at first simple huts that often turn into labyrinths designed to discourage marauders. Inside there are objects and materials accumulated with hard work, the backbone of every survival, often mixed with what is collected from air supplies, occasional killings and organized expeditions that can guarantee immediate resources, weapons and access to very useful projects. And to get them it is well worth killing someone, even if in Rust you often kill regardless. He kills himself to mark the territory, to discourage future threats and even to whet reactions, in search of an adrenaline rush that gives meaning to the time that elapses between one wipe and another. Death in Rust is a faithful companion and it is also in a group although the worst torture falls to those who try the path of the game alone and risk a post-traumatic shock ordeal unless playing on a deserted server.
A five-year long road
On the cheerful island of Rust, even chickens attack fights and it is common to see armed human beings chasing cheerful nudists destined to end up upside down within moments of their coming into the world. Some more powerful groups even enjoy blocking the buildings of others, while others engage in the systematic destruction of others and do not have too many qualms about waiting for the archenemies of the moment to be all to bed. However structures are vulnerable, disconnection does not secure our possessions and not even automatic defenses can do much in the face of the constant commitment of those who live to impose themselves on others. And if in the best case the players who are not part of our group represent an interesting challenge, in the worst they are entities that aim to arouse anger, not caring about creating an atmosphere that today we would define toxic, forcing us to have to choose well the server in which to play. But even in the best of situations imaginable it is still good to always be ready to pull out the claws. In Rust, any encounter can quickly turn into a massacre and even if someone reaches out to us pitying our poverty, turning away from them is never a good idea. It is not because Rust's most terrifying weapon is not the AK 47 and not even the stone from which everything is born. Rust's most fearsome weapon is deception and the only tool to fight it is a fast, close-knit and determined group. And that's what players of Rust like, a title whose alpha has been running for five years and hasn't met any revolutionary changes with the release of the Early Access dimension. In addition to the price, which has almost doubled, what changes are the graphic rendering, once again significantly improved, and the pace of the updates that will be released on a monthly basis in the standard version and on a daily basis in the one, now stand alone, called staging.
And it is in this that vehicles, structural improvements and evolutions promised for the future of Rust by a team that remains entirely at work on a project that, despite the exit from Early Access, is still on the high seas will probably appear first. But that's not to say it hasn't come a long way in these five years. A luster that has brought us a whole new client, official 400-player servers, a real fauna, tons of objects to build, new interactions, new parameters, anti-cheat systems and a myriad of fixes, sound effects and other tweaks. Fixed the flying doors and other more or less sensational bugs we have really seen everything, including the addition of eyebrows and assorted nudity that fade into the background in the face of the evolution of artificial life, but are still pieces of a title that has constantly enriched with interactions, materials, projects and sound effects, even allowing us to hide part of our possessions underground. And to all this the latest patch, what we could define as launch, adds new tooltips, gherkins with the risk of Botox, better lighting, the terrifying Frog Boots, new effects, improvements to the vegetation, animals now linked to their respective climatic zones and countless fixes and balances ranging from the immediate availability of the double metal door to the AK47 recoil. They are not radical changes, even if it is a decidedly rich patch, but as we have already said, yet another update of a title still in development and which will soon welcome more substantial news, which will be added to a long work that has taken a long way from the first and ramshackle Rust.
Groundhog Day
The work carried out in these five years has also had a drastic impact from a technical point of view, putting us in front of credible mountains, realistic water, real-time reflections and depth of field. All seasoned with a substantial improvement in the animations, although that of the jump is still horrible, and an intense atmosphere supported by the tracks in perfect post-apocalyptic style, by the torches that can be glimpsed at a huge distance in the dark night, with increasingly more colors. lively and with increasingly evolved effects. And with this latest patch the result, although overall lower than the most recent survival ones, is really valuable. The improvement to the vegetation, ranging from the yield of the foliage to the introduction of new tree variants, is undoubtedly the most visible, but the technical evolution embraces every aspect starting from the streams to get to the icebergs. Thanks to all this, the new version of Rust has managed to shake off the patina of an eternal independent title and although the result does not reach the peaks touched by other younger survival, it gives us valuable glimpses, while weighing on the performance of a title that at the base however it remains modest. What hasn't changed is the substance we had to contend with as soon as we set foot on a populous Spanish server. The first human encountered after the servers rebooted gave us a pair of pants to cover our shame. The second greeted us and then treacherously killed us. The third chased us away shouting insults and convinced us to repair in a less busy area. The same area chosen by a ravenous bear who sent us back upside down in an instant. Rather disappointed, we came back to life, we took another gallop running away from anything that moved and we finally managed to build something, fishing with both hands in the large number of projects immediately available whose increase has increased, month after month, the survival chances of newbies, casual players and players overwhelmed by stronger groups.
Possibilities that also include peaceful interactions, as in the case of automatic vendors, in a landscape that embraces senseless violence but surprises us with some pleasant variations on the theme. There are in fact servers based exclusively on sandbox and construction, there is a battle royale variant that combines the mechanics of the game with quick games and there is no shortage of modifications of all kinds, including one that allows you to create and manage a clan. The horizon is broad and the population large enough to allow us to test every variation. With the arrival of the latest update, there are about 30.000 active players simultaneously, not counting the thousands queuing on the official servers, 20.000 of which are scattered between the Community and Modded servers. Many flocked to admire the new graphics, but it is still clear that Rust is a living reality, although it still has to deal with forced wipes or wipes necessitated by technical issues, resets that are antithetical to the goal of creating those persistent worlds we envisioned five years ago. Such an approach, among other things without any system to manage crime and the economy, forces players to start from scratch and makes it difficult to create those complex communities that we imagined five years ago. But much of the interest of active Rust players revolves around the instability of worlds that are promptly reset, upsetting the balances that have been created previously and renewing the ferocious race for the survival of the fittest.
Comment
Digital Delivery Steam Price 31,99 € Resources4Gaming.com8.5
Readers (96)8.8
Your voteRust is a piece of online survival history, an experiment born as a DayZ clone and landed on Steam in December 2013. Today, more than four years later, it comes out of the Early Alpha with an important patch even if, we must say, certainly not revolutionary. Although net, the improvement of the vegetation and the overall yield does not introduce anything new in the dynamics of the game, leaving many promises in suspense. All this despite an important increase that has brought the price from 18 to 32 euros. But the price jump is functional to a change of pace in development that will continue at full speed and in these five years has already radically transformed the Facepunch title. Every small piece, even the less evident ones of the last patch, has merged into a continuous evolutionary process that has its flaws, even structural for those who do not like the continuous reset of servers, but who have been able to place five million copies, can count on an active community and has all the cards in the rules to further mature.
PRO
- The renewed graphic design gives us a Rust in good shape
- The new version is a confirmation of Facepunch's present and future commitment
- The formula is increasingly complex, tried and tested and popular ...
- ... but for some it is repetitive and limited with respect to possible evolutions
- The community can be merciless and unpleasant
- There is still a long way to go to reach the final goal
