Poor graphics, slow framerate and more bugs than imaginable. Rust was originally a computer game that was extremely popular and was released to consoles like Xbox and Playstation. Having recently launched earlier this year, the Rust Console Edition has pulled some mixed reviews from the Rust player community. The game’s diverse fanbase is either excited for new updates or disappointed by the poorly managed release. 

The release date was set to be at the end of 2020, but the seemingly rushed launch was already behind schedule, as they officially tested beta at the end of April 2021 through early May. 

My longtime friends on Xbox and I eagerly waited to download the open beta on Apr. 23 at 5 a.m. at 5 AM. Except,  Xbox users were delayed the entirety of the day. When we finally got in the beta, it ran smoothly and had little to no issues. The Developer team of rust opened the game to test and to fix the bugs and issues that occurred, so the official launch would run smoother. Overall, the game didn’t have a terrible start, and the launch was very enjoyable to play. The reason being is, no real flaws showed, the gameplay was smooth and you could truly enjoy all aspects of Rust, for example: Gunfights, building, crafting and even something as simple as just running through an open field without your game crashing.

Rust has a community known for its overwhelming toxicity in player interactions; the game has little to no real objective other than to survive the game sets the player up and rewards betrayal and killing others. This, combined with proximity chat with no regulation or repercussion of what’s said, means that much of what is said is offensive. It’s safe to say that the game is not “child friendly”, this could be a milder game and enjoyable game, for a younger audience if the Rust developer team implemented a reporting system for toxic behavior in-game. 

When the official beta test servers finally ended and the official release happened on May 21, it was a disaster. Rust Developers had taken the version of the game, and instead of advancing it to a new version with the beta data, they took it back a version. Literally, the game on launch day was running on a version that had less development than the original beta Logistically, this makes no sense and rendered the game virtually unplayable. I personally had little success playing Rust at launch, once you began playing the slow lag-filled game you would frequently experience crashing. This is annoying because you’d have to spend around five minutes each time you crashed reloading the game. Amongst the disaster that the developers caused with their sloppy effort and poor decision making, the Official Rust Console Edition Twitter became the place where official updates on the status of the game came out. This is quite frankly outrageous and unprofessional, considering they have a website and a system where they can add messages in the menu of the game.

Through many patches and updates, the most prominent bugs and glitches are plugging in headphones crash bugs, multiple user interface crashes, loading crashes, random crashes between five to ten minutes of playing, team joining bugs and untextured skins. The list goes on, proving how poorly managed the launch was. The Rust Console Edition missed the expectations that they had achieved on PC and didn’t seem much shorter than a cash grab.

If I had the chance to get my money back, I probably would. I could’ve saved myself countless hours of heartache and disappointment. The most anyone interested in the game can hope for is more updates with bug fixes and content drops. For me, however, I was just disappointed and expected more from the Rust Developer Team. I rate Rust in its current state a four out of 10 because I enjoy the time I can play without bugs or issues, but there’s too much time spent dealing with the bugs and development issues.