Rust: Console Edition review — Cut-throat survival marred by a poor Xbox port

Rust Source: Facepunch Studios

I fancy myself something of a survival game aficionado with an amanuensis of joyful chaos flare. When I played Conan: Exiles, I took upward the mantel of being the Server Santa. I would labor all day to gather the materials needed to craft unique and useful items, merely to drop them into unsuspecting clanmates' storage boxes when offline. In Ark: Survival Evolved, I was a chip more of a trickster who would wait for my friend to go offline then chop-chop rename his t-king "Raymondo" before painting it hot pink.

But Rust? None of that happens hither. Rust'south unapologetically cruel public servers have left me a shell of my happy-go-lucky survivalist self. The unrelenting abrasiveness of this world leaves little room for fleeting moments of joy. Micro freezing and unstable server connections currently plague the launch version of the panel edition, which is both years behind on updates and expected to have a completely carve up roadmap from its PC counterpart. If Rust: Console Edition is one of your about predictable games, you might want to make sure you're sitting down for this review.

Rust Console Edition

Rust: Console Edition

Bottom line: Rust: Console Edition is ruthlessly challenging survival sandbox that can brand fifty-fifty the most tedious task feel similar a victory when properly executed. The panel port is effectually three years behind its PC counterpart in updates, leading to poor quality that makes the struggles of an already unfair world feel exacerbated.

The Good

Large, procedurally generated earth to explore
A variety of means to approach survival and gameplay

The Bad

No individual games without renting a server
Years behind PC version in updates
No way to report, mute, or avert problematic players
Graphic symbol and animal models are janky

What is Rust: Console Edition?

Rust Console Edition Hero Source: Double Xi

Survival Sandbox	Rust: Panel Edition
Championship	Rust: Panel Edition
Developer	Facepunch Studios, Double Xi
Publisher	Double 11
Platforms	Xbox Ane, Xbox Series X\|S, PS4, PS5, PC
Genre	Survival Sandbox
Players	Official servers up to 100 players
Xbox GamePass	No
Launch Price	$50

Rust was originally released into early on access on Steam in 2022 as a survival sandbox game. As of May 2022, the game has finally fabricated its manner to Xbox in a newly released Console Edition. Though it seems that for the console port, the developers at Facepunch and Double Eleven have opted to use the PC launch version of the game code that left early on admission in 2022, forgoing nearly three years' worth of quality of life improvements and vital updates.

Like other survival games, Rust allows players to join official servers on which they harvest resources, gradually improving their engineering science and weaponry until they can freely explore the secrets scattered virtually the map.

Each histrion spawns in by waking up on a beach with null more than underwear, an unlit torch, and a stone for protection. There's no character customization. Rust generates what your grapheme will look like randomly when you lot initially launch the game, and developers at Facepunch Studios have intentionally designed it so that y'all're stuck with whatever the game generates for you lot.

Using your handy rock, you can cut down trees and harvest stone to arts and crafts archaic tools such as hatchets and rudimentary housing to help prolong your life. Additionally, yous'll need to manage to find food and clean water to keep yourself live. Depending on the biome you spawn in, you lot may need to manage extreme estrus, common cold, wetness, or even radiation poisoning.

Rust: Console Edition — The sky is pretty, I estimate

Rust Console Edition Source: Windows Central

Visually, the environment in Rust is quite lovely. On one occasion, I had a few moments of silence to sit down in a shelter to watch the sunset over the mountains. As the sun lowered in the skybox, the horizon lit up with campfires and torches. Information technology was a brief moment of peace in a game that had otherwise punished me at every possible turn.

As nice as the surround itself is, it is not without flaws. The procedurally generated environment often would accept rocks stacked up into the sky away from the actual land geometry, trees that clip into hillsides, and players falling through the basis mysteriously.

Rust Console Edition on Xbox Series X Source: Windows Primal

Nevertheless, the vastness of Rust'due south procedurally generated world means each server has a unique mix of biomes to explore and dominate in whatever mode you deem fit. When most people bring up Rust, the imagery of a toxic, dilapidated desert wasteland is what comes to mind. Rust is actually incredibly diverse with sprawling grasslands, towering mountains, and a beautiful winter wonderland that tin't expect to kill you with hypothermia.

Likewise, Rust doesn't have to just be a radioactive Hunger Games situation. There are actual monuments to explore and puzzles to solve in this world, but you may actually have a hard fourth dimension getting to really explore them unless you detect yourself part of a larger clan that can assistance you lot survive long enough to see them.

Rust: Console Edition — Everything wants to kill you

Rust Screenshot Squad Source: Double Eleven

Let's exist honest. Everything in Rust wants to kill you lot. The elements, the animals, and — most chiefly — the other players. During 1 of my primeval attempts at the game, I spawned into a river where another actor attempted to hunt a equus caballus, just for the spooked horse to hit and kill me immediately. The next spawn saw me in a slightly safer locale, at to the lowest degree as far every bit potentially deadly livestock went. But I shortly found myself bashed in the head with a stone by another scantily clad thespian who had only spawned.

Everything in Rust wants to kill y'all. The elements, the animals, and — most importantly — the other players.

Rust does not offer personal save files where yous can besiege with just your friends or play lone safely while learning the ropes. Yous're forced to play either on an official server or on a private server that you pay to hire. You're thrown hopelessly into the game with no tutorials or explanations.

Rust'southward lawlessness encourages the worst in a player base that can often be toxic. They're out for claret, hunting other players for sport, and they say whatsoever they please, knowing there are no in-game means for reporting them for doing so. The game encourages the use of an open mic, further ensuring that you're fully subjected to the worst of what 100 random people on an open server accept to offer verbally. The community has fostered a 'win at all costs' mantra that makes information technology difficult for new players or those who wish to savour the game with a smaller group to really proceeds whatsoever footing on the large official servers.

Rust Chopping Tree Source: Facepunch

It would exist easy enough to just shrug off the antics of an unchecked actor base if information technology weren't for server stability bug that make your low chances of survival plummet even further. In ane run across, the player who killed me approached me with a firearm. While I wasn't ready to deal with that sort of onslaught, I could have at least managed to engage in some means of self-perseverance if the game did not freeze upwardly for as much as 20-xxx seconds every time another actor came anywhere close to me.

I would exist remiss to complain about micro freezing and texture popular-in without really acknowledging that this was not merely a bad connexion to a unmarried server. Official servers are labeled with their region, so you exercise have the benefit of looking for the ones that yous're more than probable to accept a good connection with.

The console edition of Rust is actually a few years behind the electric current PC version concerning updates. These updates aren't just quality of life improvements like the "softcore" mode that PC players tin can currently savor, but bodily functionality for various weapons and equipment. When it all boils down, playing cross-play with PC players has those on console at an actual disadvantage. While you tin can narrow your server options downward to show servers for the panel you're currently playing on, you're still ultimately going to exist paying full price for an inferior product.

Rust: Panel Edition — Is the premium price for an inferior product worth it?

Rust Console Edition Source: Facepunch Studios

While Rust has had a reasonable degree of success on PC, the game really struggled to break out into the mainstream. In early on 2022, all the same, that changed equally the game saw a pickup in exposure courtesy of some large alive streams. It was a well-timed boost, with the panel launch looming around the corner. I honestly can't help but wonder if this boost in interest in the game didn't accept something to do with the sudden release of a console edition that clearly needed a little more time and piece of work.

It's not unreasonable for a title like Rust to release without parity between console ports and their PC predecessors. The differences between these ii particular versions are so striking that it actually affects your power to take advantage of cantankerous-play. The developers have also said that despite cross-play, they view the console edition as a split game from the PC version and that the update roadmap will follow its own path. Then players on console can't even look to the updates on PC to know what to look forward to every bit far equally fixes for the console edition.

Rust Console Edition

Rust: Console Edition

Bottom line: Rust: Console Edition is ruthlessly challenging survival sandbox that tin can make even the almost tedious task feel like a victory when properly executed. With a toxic fanbase, server issues, and unclear timeline for updates, at that place are plenty of reasons this may exist an unpleasant experience.

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