Rust makes better use of voice chat than any game I've ever played. You are naked and alone on the world's silliest island. There is no narrator or announcer, so instead you submerge in the quietude of the unkempt grass crunching beneath your feet, as you uselessly smash your rock against the nearest pine tree. Perhaps you've also harvested some mushrooms and a few bundles of flax; enough to stave off the hunger pangs and fashion yourself a burlap shawl to cover your shame. If you're particularly industrious, you'll have furnished a nice wooden shack a stone's throw away from some fresh water and reliable resources—the entry-level homestead necessary for any successful Rust campaign.

But then you hear it. Faintly at first. Carried on the tip of the breeze. It's another idiot in Rust.

I don't know what it is with this game. Maybe it's the fact that you spawn unclothed and uncensored, maybe it's the brutal vastness of the design, or maybe it's the simple uncouth joy of doing bad things to other human beings, but Rust has a distinctly regressive effect on the human species. The voice chat merges with the draw distance, so when you're spotted by an idiot, you'll start hearing the ♥♥♥♥-talk quietly tickling your ear. They get closer, they get louder and more confident, and suddenly you're hopping over shotgun shells while absorbing an entire dictionary of insults.

It's so hilariously antagonistic that I wish I could say I didn't love it. I wish I could say that it didn't feel incredible when one of those naked idiots charged me with their rock and I switched to the battle axe I fashioned out of scrap metal (which he almost certainly didn't know I was carrying), and put him down with a single well-placed strike. I wish I could tell you that, as I was standing over his fatally wounded body, that I didn't laugh my ass off when my headphones were filled with the voice of a prepubescent boy shouting, "Hey man, wait a second!" I wish I could say I didn't kill him anyway. No game has ever indulged our lack of humanity quite like Rust, and I wish I didn't mean that as an endorsement.

Rust makes better use of voice chat than any game I've ever played. You are naked and alone on the world's silliest island. There is no narrator or announcer, so instead you submerge in the quietude of the unkempt grass crunching beneath your feet, as you uselessly smash your rock against the nearest pine tree. Perhaps you've also harvested some mushrooms and a few bundles of flax; enough to stave off the hunger pangs and fashion yourself a burlap shawl to cover your shame. If you're particularly industrious, you'll have furnished a nice wooden shack a stone's throw away from some fresh water and reliable resources—the entry-level homestead necessary for any successful Rust campaign. But then you hear it. Faintly at first. Carried on the tip of the breeze. It's another idiot in Rust. I don't know what it is with this game. Maybe it's the fact that you spawn unclothed and uncensored, maybe it's the brutal vastness of the design, or maybe it's the simple uncouth joy of doing bad things to other human beings, but Rust has a distinctly regressive effect on the human species. The voice chat merges with the draw distance, so when you're spotted by an idiot, you'll start hearing the shit-talk quietly tickling your ear. They get closer, they get louder and more confident, and suddenly you're hopping over shotgun shells while absorbing an entire dictionary of insults. It's so hilariously antagonistic that I wish I could say I didn't love it. I wish I could say that it didn't feel incredible when one of those naked idiots charged me with their rock and I switched to the battle axe I fashioned out of scrap metal (which he almost certainly didn't know I was carrying), and put him down with a single well-placed strike. I wish I could tell you that, as I was standing over his fatally wounded body, that I didn't laugh my ass off when my headphones were filled with the voice of a prepubescent boy shouting, "Hey man, wait a second!" I wish I could say I didn't kill him anyway. No game has ever indulged our lack of humanity quite like Rust, and I wish I didn't mean that as an endorsement.