Like a lot of online games, Rust is much better with friends, but unlike a lot of online games, it’s not straightforward to find them. That said, there are a few ways to make sure you’ll always find your friends in the game.
How to Play Rust With Friends
First off, you need to make sure you’re all on the same server. To do this, one of you will need to join first, and let your friends know which server to search for.
Once you’re all on the same server, you need to craft a sleeping bag. To do this, you’ll need to find hemp and/or kill animals until you have the 30 cloth required to craft it. Whoever gets the sleeping bag first should assign it to a friend by holding E on the bag, then choosing “Give To A Friend” in the menu that comes up. Either click on your friend’s name or type it in.
The friend then needs to choose to “Respawn In Sleeping Bag”, which will bring them close to you. If you have multiple friends playing, you just need to keep reassigning the sleeping bag until you’re all together.
Failing that, there’s always the old fashioned way. Holding G will bring up the map, including your precise coordinates. You either need to tell your friends yours so they can come to you, ask for theirs so you can go to them, or decide on a set of coordinates to meet up at.
If you begin the game too far away from each other, you can press F1 to respawn in a different biome. There are three in the game; Desert, Forest, and Snow.
CES looked a little different this year, as the annual tech show was held entirely virtually due to the global health crisis. Despite the shakeup in how the show was programmed, there were plenty of big announcements and reveals that caught our attention.
While CES is usually a show focused primarily on consumer tech, this year’s event also had a number of important takeaways for gaming. In this video, we’re rounding up some of the most exciting and interesting announcements from the show, including 8K TVs, RGB facemasks, and updates on PlayStation. The video also covers the latest for gaming laptops, Nvidia’s RTX 3060 graphics card, and new gaming monitors from ASUS, among many others.
Be sure to check out the full video to find out everything new and exciting from CES 2021. And stick with GameSpot for all the latest on games, tech, and entertainment!
Animal Crossing: New Horizons was undoubtedly one of the biggest game launches of last year, and its popularity isn’t slowing down in 2021. To the joy of makeup-wearing Animal Crossing fans everywhere, Nintendo has announced an Animal Crossing: New Horizons collaboration with cosmetics brand ColourPop, and the collection looks as adorable as you’d expect. The Animal Crossing x ColourPop collection launches Thursday, January 28 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET, and you can sign up to be notified at ColourPop.
The Animal Crossing ColourPop collection appears to include four different eyeshadow palettes, each with four different shades inspired by characters from the game. There’s an Isabelle palette with warm pink and yellow shades; a cool purple palette inspired by the Able sisters; a silvery green palette featuring the Nooks; and a brown neutrals palette that’s a nod to Blathers and Celeste. The shade names are all references to the game as well, like “Resident Rep,” “Meteor Shower,” and “Water Landing.”
The Animal Crossing x ColourPop line launches on January 28.
The promo photos also show a golden “Bellionaire” face glitter, so Animal Crossing fans can constantly be reminded of the millions of Bells they’ve paid to Tom Nook. The collection also seems to include six different lip pencils in red and neutral shades as well as two blushes in pink and coral.
This isn’t the first gaming/pop culture-related makeup collection ColourPop has created; the store put out a stunning Sailor Moon collection last year, and it recently released a Baby Yoda-inspired eyeshadow palette. While no prices for the Animal Crossing collection were given, ColourPop is known for its affordably priced makeup; the entire Sailor Moon collection, for instance, could be bought for just $89. If past launches are any indication, however, the Animal Crossing collection is going to sell out fast, so you’ll want to be ready when it all goes live on ColourPop’s site on January 28.
Respawn has snuck Kings Canyon back into Apex Legends for a limited time. And that’s not all either, Apex Legends’ original map seems to be the new home for The Mirage Voyage, which has parked in the empty crater where Skull Town used to be. If you want to see for yourself, you’ll have to act fast–Kings Canyon will only remain in the rotation until January 21.
Kings Canyon was removed from Apex Legends’ map rotation at the start of Season 7: Ascension, replaced by the battle royale’s third map, Olympus. Season 7 saw the removal of The Mirage Voyage from World’s Edge as well, the first town takeover to seemingly be removed from the game. Now we know better–it wasn’t removed, it was just moved.
Be sure to aim carefully–unlike when it was on World’s Edge, there’s nothing beneath The Mirage Voyage while it’s parked at Kings Canyon.
If you go into the cabin of The Mirage Voyage, you can find a new audio recording from Mirage’s mom. It’s…a very sad message to listen to–it’s clear her mind is beginning to go. However, if you listen to the whole message, there are a few cool lore tidbits. The biggest of which is that Mirage’s uncle is Droz, a Titan Pilot you meet in Titanfall 2. Initially a part of the 6-4 (the game’s best Faction), Droz goes on to partner up with Davis to found The Last Resort–both Pilots work with you in Titanfall 2’s Frontier Defense mode.
That’s not the only change to Kings Canyon either. Flying in the sky above the canyon is a ship with an electronic billboard advertising that Salvo is joining the Syndicate. Salvo is a planet, first mentioned in a memo that’s hidden within a pile of other Easter eggs scattered about Wattson’s desk in a piece of official artwork created by JEL (@jelart) and featuring contributions from Cherry (@cherrizini), Beau (@BadgerBitten), Brooke (@rookiebe_), Vinegar and Soda (@VinegarAndSoda), Yuki (@yukiiow_), and Kiria (@EneKiria).
The planet was again mentioned in Season 7’s Quest, Family Portrait, when terrorist Creighton Sawtelle asks Cherisse Che, Lifeline’s mom, to tell the Syndicate that “They can have Salvo. I want Psamathe.” Not much is known about Salvo, but the memo on Wattson’s desk mentions “Salvo brings with it [ineligible] of armaments” and based on the planet’s name, we can probably assume that maybe the Syndicate wants Salvo because they possess plenty of weapons or are incredibly knowledgeable in how to use them.
The last time the Syndicate–the company responsible for running the Apex Games–got involved with a planet or company, it was to add the Hammond Robotics-sponsored legend Forge to the games. We all know how that turned out (Forge is super dead), but maybe the Syndicate will do something similar here and Season 8’s new character will come from Salvo. If so, perhaps this new character will fit the supposed theme of the planet and be an explosive or weapons expert.
Marvel’s WandaVision has finally arrived on Disney+, and with it brings the first new Marvel Cinematic Universe story since Spider-Man: Far From Home. This new show is filled with Easter Eggs and references to not only Marvel’s storied history, but also to the classic TV shows that clearly inspired it.
As of this writing, episodes 1 and 2 of WandaVision are available on Disney+. We’ve gathered every Easter Egg and reference in one place, which you can see below, and each week we will update the slideshow with more easter eggs and theories as the new episodes air. Spoilers of course follow!
From nods to I Love Lucy and Bewitched to pivotal stories in Marvel comics and the MCU, these first episodes are filled with callbacks that can be easy to miss and may give us a glimpse as to what the future holds for not only WandaVision, but the MCU as a whole.
One Night in Miami is now available on Amazon Prime.
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With an eye to social politics, Regina King has forged a storied career as an actress. She’s appeared in challenging and heralded films, like Boyz In The Hood, Ray, and If Beale Street Could Talk, for which she won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. On television, she gave voice to the spirited brothers at the center of the superb cartoon series Boondocks. Then, just last year she awed audiences as Sister Night in the revered HBO sequel to the graphic novel Watchmen. Since 2013, King’s been carving out a career as a director as well, helming a slew of TV dramas. Now, King has come to put her auteur stamp on cinema with her feature directorial debut One Night In Miami, and she does so with all the confidence and might of Muhammad Ali.
Adapted from Kemp Powers’ play of the same name, One Night In Miami imagines what might have been said between four major figures of 1960s Black Excellence. It’s set on February 25, 1964, the monumental night when Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) was crowned the world heavyweight boxing champion. After the fight, Cassius (Eli Goree) celebrates with friends: millionaire soul singer Sam Cooke (Hamilton‘s Leslie Odom Jr.), NFL star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Civil Rights activist Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir). However, revelry turns to tension as the foursome begins to debate what it means to be Black and famous in America.
Staged simply and leaning hard into dialogue, One Night In Miami can feel precisely like what it is — a stage play translated to film — yet King keeps things from becoming static by pulling the action outside the motel for a spell and stretching the time beyond its central struggle. Though the film is chiefly set on that one night, it begins in 1963. There, each historical figure is established within the context of a white audience. Cassius fights in an arena full of white people who boo his bravado. Sam plays at the Copacabana, where a white audience scowls at his song. In his Georgian hometown, Jim chats with a wealthy white neighbor, who pairs congratulations on the football star’s history-making season with a casually slung slur. Finally, a news program with a white anchor introduces footage of Malcolm, describing him as preaching “a gospel of hate.” This setup reflects not how America saw these men, but how much of white America did. In this, King urges her audience to recognize who gets to write the history of a nation. It is those in power.
Power is the central topic on this night in Miami. Each member of the quartet carries a power, won from hard work, resilience, and extraordinary talent. White Americans cannot ignore them, because they are on TV, on the radio, and — Jim reveals with a wink to The Dirty Dozen — soon will be in movies too. With a mind to the movement, Malcolm pushes the others to consider how they might use the platform of fame to do more for their Black community. His passion turns to preaching, which chafes at Sam, who bears the brunt of the orator’s stinging arguments. However, writer Powers keeps a delicate balance, never allowing one character to run away with the conversation by providing provocative counterpoints. What unfurls is an intense debate about what is owed and what is risked, offering no easy answers.
The conversation swings from systemic racism to economics, colorism, corruption, and faith. Yet things never veer into the theoretical, as Powers’ adapted screenplay grounds it in facts and personal stakes. This gives King’s cast meat to sink their teeth into, and each does so with a gusto that brings history alive. Goree is bombastic and exhilarating as Cassius. He dances around the ring, throwing that pretty face at his opponents as a dare. His speed and exuberance are smirking rebellion. Goree masters the iconic boxer’s popping patter, yet never falls into the trap of comical impersonation. Instead, he is a vision of youth, athleticism, and unapologetic pride.
Slim and somber, Malcolm becomes Cassius’s foil. Ben-Adir smoothly takes on the punching cadence of the iconic speaker along with the precise hand gestures that punctuate his points. Yet Ben-Adir folds in a vulnerability that gives a peek behind X’s public persona. His tone is imbued with a soft melancholy that silently speaks of brewing troubles. His smile is sheepish as he presents his friends with a paltry snack of ice cream. To all this, Ben-Adir smoothly layers a world-weariness that reveals the tireless burden of this man’s battle, which underlines his sparking frustrations with those who could aid him but — as he sees it — won’t.
Where Malcolm is tense, Jim is cool as the underside of a pillow. Tall, broad, suave, he strides and grins with ease, knowing he is a force on the field and off. The others insist this pro athlete always says what he means, and yet within this story Powers finds corners to speak of insecurity as the football legend considers a new line of work. To this, Hodge brings a seductive swagger, a radiant charm, and a deep-set determination. As friends feud, he plays mindful mediator but without pulling his punches, knitting together friendships so rich they feel real.
Broadway star Odom slides smoothly into the shoes of Sam, whose voice enchanted with songs of yearning and love. Yet he must bring to this bouncy persona a fire that Cooke himself may have felt he couldn’t show. He does so with a brilliant burning that will have Hamilton fans cheering once more. In this way, King and her cast take these men down from stodgy pedestals of history and resuscitate them, pumping blood into their veins and breath back into their lungs to allow them to be more than history but human.
You can’t walk away from this drama with the cozy lie that things are so different now. Regina King won’t offer a consolatory end-beat that sings of promise and progress. She reminds you of loss, so we are left with the weight of it. We are left to consider what such a setup might look like today. (One could imagine artists like Ray Fisher, John Boyega, and Cardi B in such a room talking just as candidly.) What King gives us is a gift of insight, humanity, and then the silent challenge to stop watching and start doing.
Comedian and actor Bill Burr has a role on the Star War TV show The Mandalorian as Mayfeld, a character who–like Burr himself–speaks with a Boston accent. Some part of the Star Wars community has raised some concerns about this.
Burr defended this character’s Boston accent in an interview with Jimmy Fallon. Burr said people don’t seem to care that Han Solo can communicate with Chewbacca or that C-3PO has an English accent, so it’s not much concern that Mayfeld has a Boston accent.
“What about English? Doesn’t that look weird if you went to a galaxy far, far away and you get off, and somebody’s like, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ And you totally understand them?” Burr said. “What about the fact that Han Solo is talking to a bigfoot? He’s talking bigfoot, Han Solo’s speaking English. They never break character. How about C-3PO with an English accent, that was OK?”
Burr ended his defense with a shot at Star Wars fans who took issue with it in the first place, “Eff those nerdy, nitpicking nerds,” he said with a laugh.
Burr is a comedian known for pulling no punches, so his response to Star Wars fans in this manner is no surprise. Prior to his casting in The Mandalorian, Burr had been very outspoken about how much he did not like Star Wars, and it was this very element that helped him get the role in the end.
It’s also worth noting that Burr is not being serious here. He’s just trying to be funny. Similar to how he made fun of Michelle Obama’s book tour, Burr was poking fun at the Star Wars crowd with his jokes just to get laughs. “Well, the thing is, when I was making it, I wasn’t being serious. I was just doing that comedian thing,” he said in an interview.
When people think of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, they’ll likely gravitate to either the comics from Bryan Lee O’Malley or the live-action film from Edgar Wright. However, one of the lesser-known strands of the Scott Pilgrim brand was the film’s licensed game tie-in. Like the film, it was not only a faithful adaptation of the comics’ tribute to geek culture and retro games, but it also happened to be a fun co-op brawler in its own right. After a sudden delisting from digital video game stores in 2014, the once-lost licensed game has scored a second life with the Complete Edition, and it hasn’t lost its exuberant style. The game’s passion for a bygone era can often be a bit overwhelming, yet it still offers a satisfying time brawling through the streets with friends.
Like its comic and film counterpart, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game sticks with the same video game-inspired conceit, but interprets it into an actual video game. After the titular character meets the girl of his dreams in Ramona Flowers, Scott and his bandmates Kim and Stephen, along with Ramona, have to fight a rogue’s gallery of evil exes seeking to disrupt the relationship. In the vein of a classic arcade brawler, the game keeps its story light to put all its energy into showing off the stunning 2D visuals of its side-scrolling beat-’em-up gameplay, which leans heavily into the splendor of the retro era.
The original game wore its inspirations–classic games like River City Ransom, Final Fight, and Final Fantasy–on its sleeve, and the Complete Edition keeps its aesthetic and core gameplay intact. What you get in this enhanced package is the full game, the four bonus modes involving zombies and dodgeball, and the extra DLC characters–which include Wallace Wells, Knives Chau, and hidden character Nega-Scott. The Complete Edition also comes with Network Mode for online play, which was a late addition in the final DLC for the original game.
One of the more striking aspects of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is its superb presentation. The spectacularly detailed and lively 2D art was impressive in 2010, and though the Complete Edition doesn’t make any updates to the graphics, the look still holds up well in 2021. The unique visual style presents itself as a hyper-detailed 16-bit game, and with a soundtrack from the indie-chiptune band Anamanaguchi, the game always keeps a youthful liveliness throughout its three-hour campaign. Adding to the atmosphere are tons of visual gags and deep cuts that reference classic horror films like Night of the Living Dead and retro games from the era of the SNES and Sega Genesis. My favorite homage is the world map of Toronto, which is modeled after Super Mario World’s stage-select interface. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game works as both a tribute to and a fun parody of retro games, and it still succeeds at being both with the Complete Edition.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game works as both a tribute to and a fun parody of retro games, and it still succeeds at being both with the Complete Edition.
While constantly referencing geek culture can be a bit passé in 2021, Scott Pilgrim puts most of its weight behind the core gameplay, and it still lands. Despite its hyperactive style, the core gameplay uses a simple control scheme and has clear objectives for you to follow. Once you’ve eased into the cadence, and when the game is firing on all cylinders, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a satisfying and even humorous brawler. A sense of repetition can easily set in after some time, which is a common side-effect of the genre, yet seeing my favorite characters evolve and grow in strength over the course of the story, and having them barrelling their way through crowds of angry ruffians that once put up a harsher fight, still manages to put a smile a my face. This satisfaction is enhanced when in a group, and pulling off special moves and team attacks with friends–where you can launch up enemies and with your allies naturally following up with an aerial attack or power move–offers a sense of finesse that can make the action fulfilling even after multiple playthroughs.
On the surface, it looks to be a standard brawler, which isn’t far off from the truth, but Scott Pilgrim actually has RPG mechanics working under the hood as well. You can collect resources from fallen enemies and spend them in shops to boost your stats, a necessary component for completing the game. However, the game never establishes that this is expected of you except in a tips sub-menu you have to check yourself, and these shops blend easily into the background during fights. While you do level up and earn new skills with experience points, the core character growth comes from buying items, and it can be easy to overlook this when sticking with the flow of the game. If you don’t take the time to boost your characters, you can easily hit a difficulty wall after a set of levels in the campaign, which can be annoying.
The game is at its best when played with friends, and many of the large-scale fights seem tailor-made for a full squad. Powering through a level with a group can make otherwise steady encounters turn into chaotic rumbles, yet playing solo can make it feel like you have the odds stacked against you. While you can still clear the game solo, and that’s how I rolled for two full playthroughs with different characters, there were moments when I felt the game’s AI was working overtime to keep me on the back foot. At times, playing solo will force you into encounters with as many as 10 enemies at once, most of whom are quick to use melee weapons and combos that can lock you into a daze. Without backup, it can be frustrating to face those encounters, which turn into extended bouts where you’ll need to carefully dodge thrown weaponry as you take out foes one by one. These moments can severely disrupt the pacing of the game, and though they don’t occur too often, these moments can severely disrupt the pacing of the game. It’s disappointing that the Complete Edition doesn’t rebalance these aspects of the game, as these issues were present in the original.
This is what makes the online play such a welcome feature, which players couldn’t experience until nearly two years after the original game’s launch. It’s now easier to sync up with other players online or invite friends for a game instead of having to stick with just local co-op. Though the options you have for how you want to tune online play are limited–you can choose public or private games and set the amount of players you want to join–from my experiences in a handful of online games on PC, I found it mostly stress-free to pull a squad together. However, these online sessions weren’t entirely free of issues. The new online mode did seem to trigger some occasional bugs, one of which halted progress in an early level. This only happened once, and the majority of my experience playing Scott Pilgrim online was largely stable and kept the fun of the core game.
Landing the final blow against an evil ex will cap off the fight with a dramatic finish.
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This new iteration for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is consistent with the original, yet disappointingly, the Complete Edition does come with some minor technical issues that stick out. Along with somewhat regular drops in frame rate during the more hectic levels, especially during online play, the Complete Edition’s overall sound mixing is quite poor. The music and sound effects are surprisingly low-volume throughout the game, and frequently, the game’s soundtrack–which itself is low–easily drowns out the action sound effects. While this may seem like a minor quibble, the sound effects of thrashing and pummeling foes add to the satisfaction of taking down enemies in a beat-’em-up. There were numerous instances where I was fighting enemies without much feedback, which was disappointing.
Though I had my fun with the original game 10 years ago and had moved on, I still found coming back to the core loop and flow of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game to be a satisfying romp. It’s not often to see games that get pulled from circulation get a second chance, yet the Complete Edition more than makes the case that this cult favorite beat-’em-up has earned another shot. While much has changed over the last decade when it comes to geek-appeal and retro gaming appeal, what’s here is still a solid beat-’em-up that’s gotten mostly better with age.
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Ukrainian developer GSC Game World has provided an update on the status of the highly anticipated and long-in-development first-person horror survival title STALKER 2.
According to GSC Game World, STALKER 2 development is “progressing smoothy” on PC and Xbox Series X|S. While a release date has not been nailed down yet, the studio reiterated that STALKER 2 will hit Xbox Game Pass the same day it launches on both platforms.
GSC Game World’s public relations specialist Zakhar Bocharov said the studio is “pleased to see” how well STALKER 2 is progressing and is confident about the experience being created.
“We’re progressing smoothly, including Xbox Series X|S versions as well,” Bocharov said. “The aim is to deliver the product of the highest quality possible on every platform it’s announced for. With fast SSD, RTX support (both Series X and S) and 4K-resolution (Series X), we’re pleased to see how S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is shaping up to be the ultimate experience we’ve initially promised.”
Alongside disclosing how development is going on the STALKER 2 project, Bocharov shared two other pieces of information about the game: the new protagonist and a gameplay teaser. STALKER 2’s protagonist is Skif, a codenamed fans will “hear a lot,” according to Bocharov. And the brief one-minute teaser, above, shows off the ambiance players will experience.
STALKER 2 is slated to launch in 2021 for PC and Xbox Series X|S with one of the biggest open worlds ever. This sequel marks the first time that the STALKER franchise is coming to consoles, and GSC Game World said it could reach up to 120FPS on Xbox Series X.
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I hope you have an SD card in your Nintendo Switch, and if so, I hope it has room, because there’s a massive sale happening right now on digital Nintendo Switch games. These aren’t just diamond-in-the-rough indies you may never have heard of, either: some of Nintendo’s own first-party games are on sale for their lowest prices since last Black Friday.
If you have the room on your Switch, I highly recommend taking advantage of these sale prices. If you don’t have room, I recommended upgrading or deleting some games you’re never going to play again. Here are the digital Nintendo Switch games on sale at Amazon right now:
If you’re not too keen on Amazon for your Nintendo Switch digital needs, the sale is also happening at the Nintendo eShop, Best Buy, Target, GameStop and even the Humble Store. That’s plenty of chances for you to save on some stellar Switch games, and other retailers have some games Amazon doesn’t (and vice-versa).
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Seth Macy is IGN’s Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend. He’s currently filling in as host of IGN’s Nintendo Voice Chat podcast.
