Rust - intial impressions

Game is $19.99 on steam - early access (Alpha).

Basically this game combines the crafting and gathering of Minecraft with some of the PVP elements of DayZ (i.e. almost everyone you meet wants to kill you and still all the crap you've been gathering for the last 4 hours).

I really haven't seen any bugs and there is enough to learn/do and it is easy on the eyes.  The color pallet and art work is a little more cartoony than I would like (I like the grit and dirt feel of DayZ) but it is by no means offensive.  The game and menus also control very well and are for the most part fairly intuitive.

I find the melee combat to be very clunky - lots of misses when you thought you hit and being hit when the other guy seems to be more than 2 or 3 feet away.    The weapon based combat seems better but is my no means easy (no crosshairs).

The most exciting and differing (from DayZ) feature of the game is the base building aspect.  This is really quite impressive already - you can build structures, walls/ceilings/doors/floors/windows using different materials (wood and metal right now).  In this game you are trying to fortify your structure to prevent other players from getting all your stuff....even when you are offline people can break into your place and steal everything, destroy your house, and kill your re-spawn area (or you if it is a sleepers server which means your body stays on the server a sleep when you disconnect).  This makes the game VERY difficult to stay alive for long and it can be very frustrating after a night of getting good drops and building up what you think is a decent structure only to log in the next day and find out you are back to square 1.

Each server is a different instance of the game for you.  So if I have strucuter and loot on Server 1 - it does not exist or carry over to Server 2.

So far I've been having a good time with it (playing on my own).  I've seen servers with ~200 people on them (that is crazy).  I usually try to find a server with 50 - 80 people so I don't just get in and get run over.  There are some PvE type elements (and even some servers running PvE only) Bears, Wolves, Zombies are all threats but not really - you can pretty much out run them and there really aren't many....after a few hours you'll be hunting these threats for food/loot etc.  The other PvE thing that is different is Rads - or radiation.  There are loot drop areas on the map where the radiation is very high and you can only survive in these areas for a short time (unless you have radiation pills).  There is also air drops with good loot - about once an hour I think a plane will fly over the map and drop a loot box.....I haven't been brave enough (or armed well enough) to go fight with the other hundreds of people on the map for this.  There is a day night cycle but no dynamic weather.  The map is big - not as big as DayZ but still big enough.

The real danger is the PvP.....people will kill you on site - if that doesn't appeal to you then you might want to reconsider this one.

I've only put in about 12 hours so far but I'm looking forward to putting in more.

I'm going to check out 7 Days to Die next as that one looks very interesting (the Zombie threat is very real in that one and again it focusses on base building as a means of defense).