
After being riddled with bullets outside of an irradiated town in a near empty server my nerves were shot. I'd managed a good six hours of scavenging for food, resources and ultimately better weapons to defend myself in the near-baron wasteland; even building myself quite the wooden plaza in the shade of a nearby mountain. Suffice to say, the death cut deep. Whilst this entire diary could be dedicated to the game's mechanics, it basically takes the survival aspects of Minecraft (whilst whittling down the amount of resources) and Dayz's PVP style multi-player (whilst increasing the player count) which leads to every single death counting. This isn't your little brother's Call of Duty, where you get back up within the next five seconds without a care in the world. A death in Rust is dark. So much so that recuperating your losses and starting again can be a bigger hurdle than starting up in the first place.

Perhaps its the influence of the massively successful Zombie Survival game that has lead to such “bandit” like behaviour amongst the servers. Groups of players band together in an effort to raid others for resources and items as its easier to kill another player than grind for an extra piece of wood. So far I've had players try to break down my front door WHILST being at home, as well as being chased by a number of players who happened to spawn a few feet from me; thinking that they could steal my loot armed with their bare fists. I resented this at first, being virtually mugged once or twice will do that to you, but now I think it actually highlights what is so RIGHT about this game. The atmosphere is palpable because you play within a dangerous world. Much like the comic series “The Walking Dead”, whilst there are plenty of real world fears surrounding you; other humans create the most problems. Shooting on site is a must when playing without a microphone as you can't rationalise with a potential captor/victim, but even if you were, is it worth taking any risks? Getting the drop on someone creates a real moral dilemma in the sense that you KNOW just how hard people have to work to get decent kit, which gives you cause to think about what you've stolen upon finding the higher grade loot.