Games in Asia: One of my friends once described me an “overly-friendly misanthrope.” I enjoy the company of others, but enjoy my own more and as such I have avoided multiplayer games like the plague. Games are my private time to relax and recuperate from the stresses of the day. So, the idea of welcoming others into that sanctity is totally beyond me.
From base building to swinging willies, here are the best survival games around, which include a couple of less than obvious picks.
Akin from The Nerd Stash: "Rust is a brutal, hardcore game that remains a bastion of the survival genre. It's far from perfect, though, and there are a number of issues that developer Facepunch really needs to address. But will they?"
Rust continues to punish with its difficult online experience from both the game and other players, and June's update is starting to roll out.
The author makes a critical mistake.
Multiplayer RPG's can never match up to single-player, AI-based equivalents because players are just role-playing while artificial characters ARE what they are supposed to be.
For example when you watch a movie with friends, someone will always make a joke to hide emotion in the deep, hard-hitting scenes, and thus these scenes lose their power in multiplayer.
When a player-character in Rust dies, you know they'll be revived, and it would be stupid to cry for them (they're not really dead!), but when your companion in something like Mass Effect dies (Mordin for example, though this isn't a spoiler for those of you who STILL haven't played ME3, he doesn't need to die, but his death is epic), the very entity you had in your party and spoke to is now gone for the rest of the game; he is unaccessible. When your son dies in Crusader Kings 2, they really die, and everything they were is gone, which can't be said for humans.
Comparing advanced AI to humans then is pretty simple. Multiplayer games like RUST are like C-movies, where none of you can act convincingly and think the whole thing's a laugh, while AI-based single-player games CAN be blockbusters once the technology is there to allow convincing voice synthesis and spontaneous AI personalities.
The future is Kingdom Come: Deliverance