Review: Rust.

Hello Ladies and Gentleman!
Today I'll be doing a review of a survival game called Rust

A bit about the game and developers.
Rust is being developed and published by Facepunch Studios. They are the creators of a very popular indie game called Garry's Mod. Rust is still in Early Alpha, so there might be many changes by the time the game goes out.

About Gameplay.
So, as I said, Rust is a survival game. Sandbox Survival game. In rust you spawn on a random location on a very large map. You start off with two med kits, a rock and a torch. The torch is only good at night. It allows you to see once the night falls, but it doesn't let you do anything else. Med kit is good in case you get attacked by wolves or a bear. If they manage to hurt you, just use the Med kit to patch yourself up and stop the bleeding. And the rock.. The rock is your main tool! But you do want to switch it as fast as possible. With rock you can hit trees and other rocks to get materials. With those materials you can make weapons or other tools, such as stone hatchet or even a house! That is pretty much the point of this game. Build a house and survive.

Once you managed to get your stone hatchet you would want to run around and hunt animals for food. Funny thing about that is that every single animal in the game gives you Chicken breasts as food. I'm sure they will change that later but for now it's quite funny! Just like in DayZ, the hardest part of this game is trusting strangers. You never know who is really friendly, and who just wants to kill you to steal all of your stuff. During my gameplay of Rust, the only friendlies that I actually managed to get across of were the ones who I knew from my clan. Everyone else just tried to kill me. So be careful!

Building in this game is large! You can't customize anything, but they do allow you to create the house as large as you want it to be. All you need is a lot of materials. Now, gathering materials is easy and fast. All you need to do is hit stuff like trees or stones. But building stuff takes time. A lot of time. So the best thing to do would get a group of four or more people, and decide who builds what. Because some items take over a minute or longer to build up, which is bad. When you are crafting stuff, you can't move at all. So if enemy is about to kill you, you couldn't do anything about it. If you have a group of four people who separate crafting jobs between themselves you could build stuff much faster.

Next thing to talk about is in game houses that weren't made by players, and radiation. During your gameplay there might be a chance that you hear a weird ticking sound, which could either become faster and faster or slower until it disappears. If the speed is growing that means that the player is inside of a radiation area. For a short while, it won't affect him, but after about a minute or two the player will start loosing his health very fast. That radiation area is usually only around the houses which weren't player made. Now it makes you think  - why would anyone even go there. Mainly because those houses are the houses with best items in the game. You can find suits there, armors, clothing, weapons, mods for weapons and blueprints.

Blueprints are the only thing that your character does not lose once he dies. So make sure to always study the blueprint as soon as you get one. The final thing that I can talk about Rust is the saving system. In this game your character always stays in the game, even when you log out and close the game. That's why you need to build a house and a bed. Bed allows you to re spawn close to the area where bed is, once you die. And house protects you from the enemies. Unless they have C4 and manage to destroy your house..

Graphic and Audio
Graphic in this game is very good. There's a lot of grass, and everything looks to be pretty nice. On the other hand, coalition doesn't work too good, so you might find yourself going into a tree when you're trying to get wood from it. I'm sure that that will be fixed once the game goes fully out. There are not too many sounds in the game just yet, and I kinda doubt that there will be too many so I don't think I should review that. But for what it is in the game, it's pretty good.

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Nice survival game.
- Cheap.
- Clean UI.
- No crosshair.
- Big map.
- A lot of building parts.

Cons:
- There is no map inside of the game.
- Health bar, food bar and radiation bars are too small.
- It is sometimes quite hard to meet up with friendlies.

Final grade:  8/10

Extra info: For the game that is still in early alpha, Facepunch studios did an amazing job! I really like the game and support it. If you'd like to buy it, please go ahead and go here.

Game Review: Insurgency.

Today I'll write a review of a new tactical FPS called Insurgency.

A bit about the game and developers.

Insurgency is a tactical FPS game developed and published by New World Interactive. It's actually a game that started out as a mod for Half-Life 2. Since the players really enjoyed it, the developers took a step further and made a standalone game.

About Gameplay.

Insurgency is a non-stop online game. There are two sides, terrorists and anti-terrorists. When someone says "I want to try out something new.. Something different.." they usually expect something like Insurgency. This game is completely different from other FPS games such as CoD or Battlefield. As I said, Insurgency is a very tactical game. If you die you can't re-spawn until the round ends, or until your team or enemy team manage to capture the opponent's objective. And let me tell you, people die very very fast! Usually it takes you one or maximum two bullets in chest if you don't wear any armor. If you wear light armor it takes a few extra. If heavy armor, even more bullets are needed. 

In Insurgency there is no currency as in different games. There is a special thing called "supply". Now, each soldier has a number of supplies that he can use, let's say that the number is 10. That person can then chose his own weapons, weapon mods, side weapon, explosives and armor that he / she sees fit. For example a basic assault weapon costs 1 supply point. A laser sight on it costs 3 points, and a red dot costs 2 more points. That person already used 6 points on his primary weapon. He uses 2 more points on light armor, and the last 2 on one frag grenade. Since that person is now on 0 supply, he can't carry anything else. No pistol, no extra ammo nothing. Also, I have to say that in this game there are two teams per side. Each team has their own type of "jobs" for soldiers. So let's say that each team has 1 leader, 2 assaults, 1 engineer, 2 bombers and 1 sniper. Sniper can't use any weapon but sniper-like weapons, while the support can only use close combat weapons. So you won't see 16 people running around with snipers, trying to impress everyone with their "360 turn skills".

Insurgency has five different game modes. Main ones are Skirmish, VIP and Search and Destroy. In Search and Destroy one side has to hold two explosives, while the other side has to find those two explosives and destroy them. In VIP one side has a player who is "VIP". Everyone from VIP's side has to protect him while he makes his run to the safe area, while the opposite side has to find him, identify and kill him. Skirmish is different. Skirmish is something like capture and hold, except that this game offers you two ways to win. Either eliminate all of the enemies, or capture and hold all three objectives. Once your team mates die, the only way for them to re-spawn is if someone from their team captures the neutral or enemy objective. If either your team mate or an enemy captures a point, everyone in the game instantly re-spawns. 

The game also offers Co-op game versus bots, but I think that developers have to work more on the bots. I tried two rounds but the AI was, at the moment of my testing at least, quite bad. They would either just stand their ground, not moving, or they would pick a target and just shoot at them without even trying to hide. Since this game is quite realistic and even a single bullet can kill you it still makes the Co-op experience quite hard, but I'm sure that the bots could be programmed better. But, for the game that is in early access it was an amazing experience!

Since the game is quite realistic, the UI is very clear. There are no marks on your screen that show you friendlies or enemies, there is no mini-map, no bullet counter and no compass. There are tiny squares around your squad members, but they are so small that they are barely recognizable. I have actually found myself shooting at my friends couple of times before realizing that they were friendlies! 

Graphic and Audio

The graphic of this game does look slightly out dated since it was programmed in Source engine, but I do have to admit that it is still rather impressive! I really loved all the details that I have seen, and all of the effects from the game. Audio is very good too and I don't know if they could add anything else to it.

Pros, cons and final grade.

Pros:

- Very tactical game.

- Extremely cheap.

- Clean UI.

- Big maps.

- Quite a few game modes.

Cons:

- Sometimes it feels as if there are just a few too little supply points available.

Final Grade: 9/10

Extra Info: I was thinking very hard about the grade of this game. After few hours I have realized, this game really does deserve a high grade. Why? Because, for the first time a game is finally different from pretty much everything that we've played so far. I really wish there would be more games like this. Amazing job New World Interactive!