Pacific Drive is a first-person driving survival game with your car as your only companion. Navigate a surreal reimagining of the Pacific Northwest, and face supernatural dangers as you venture into the Olympic Exclusion Zone. Each excursion into the wilderness brings unique and strange challenges as you restore and upgrade your car from an abandoned garage that acts as your home base. Gather precious resources and investigate what’s been left behind in the Zone; unravel a long-forgotten mystery while learning exactly what it takes to survive in this unpredictable, hostile environment.
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Pacific Drive is a game that on paper seems fairly straight forward, you drive a car across some maps and collect resources as you go which allow you to upgrade your car and progress further into the map. This is true, but it undersells just how much work goes into turning your car from a pile of shit into something that can turn rain into fuel and within radiation damage and give you a gravity boost etc.
That really is the high level overview of the game, along with an interesting aesthetic, Pacific Drive is a fun game to do a run or two in a session since a run can be anywhere from 20-45 minutes but its not a roguelite you can binge through say like Hades, as it can be quite taxing and a grind at times, especially near the endgame, if you are looking for specific resources, because while all the info is available to you in game, its not going to hold you hand either.
That also extends to the actual maintenance and upgrading of your car. If you run out of fuel for example, you don't just press the fill fuel button, you have to grab the gas pump and put it into the fuel tank and wait for it to fill and then put the pump back. If something is wrong with a door or wheel you have to inspect it and if needs sealant or replacing you have to manually get the sealing kit or replacement part and disassemble the old part and put in the new part and then breakdown the old part for scrap because nothing should go to waste when you need resources. It can take a while to get used to all the bits and bobs that go into taking care of your car and unlocking new components and even gear for you to wear while outside of the car but once you get into the swing of things it does all play like a well oiled machine and you really do start to bond with the car, bond as in you will feel miserable if it gets destroyed on a run and you have to remake shit on the car all over again lol
That really is the high level overview of the game, along with an interesting aesthetic, Pacific Drive is a fun game to do a run or two in a session since a run can be anywhere from 20-45 minutes but its not a roguelite you can binge through say like Hades, as it can be quite taxing and a grind at times, especially near the endgame, if you are looking for specific resources, because while all the info is available to you in game, its not going to hold you hand either.
That also extends to the actual maintenance and upgrading of your car. If you run out of fuel for example, you don't just press the fill fuel button, you have to grab the gas pump and put it into the fuel tank and wait for it to fill and then put the pump back. If something is wrong with a door or wheel you have to inspect it and if needs sealant or replacing you have to manually get the sealing kit or replacement part and disassemble the old part and put in the new part and then breakdown the old part for scrap because nothing should go to waste when you need resources. It can take a while to get used to all the bits and bobs that go into taking care of your car and unlocking new components and even gear for you to wear while outside of the car but once you get into the swing of things it does all play like a well oiled machine and you really do start to bond with the car, bond as in you will feel miserable if it gets destroyed on a run and you have to remake shit on the car all over again lol
It's probably my fault for over-hyping this game, thinking it was gonna be a new instant classic along the lines of Outer Wilds and Inscryption. Sadly, I've played maybe 7 hours on the week of its release and have been hesitant to open it since then.
Outside of its gorgeous presentation and intriguing atmosphere, I found the experience extremely tedious. The selling point of the game and its core mechanic, the car, ended up feeling like a burden instead of being a tool of experimentation and freedom. The reason being that you need to get out of your car every minute to pick up items and to explore buildings. The "drive 30 seconds, park, loot, drive 30 seconds" loop gets tired real fast.
It might still click for some enjoyers of looter/exploration game! I'll give it props for trying something new at least.
Outside of its gorgeous presentation and intriguing atmosphere, I found the experience extremely tedious. The selling point of the game and its core mechanic, the car, ended up feeling like a burden instead of being a tool of experimentation and freedom. The reason being that you need to get out of your car every minute to pick up items and to explore buildings. The "drive 30 seconds, park, loot, drive 30 seconds" loop gets tired real fast.
It might still click for some enjoyers of looter/exploration game! I'll give it props for trying something new at least.
I was pretty hesitant coming back to this game, mostly cause from trailers and a friends synopsis it sounded like a straightforward 4-7 hour long game about driving in anomalous areas and solving mysteries, similar to Oxenfree but on wheels and while the description isn't that far off, the length and style of game i wasn't expecting.
This game plays like a survival crafting/roguelike and while im not super opposed to those styles, they tire me out pretty quickly. Adding on the fact it has a semi-linear story that requires you to have the necessary resources to continue, and to get those resources you need to do side drives just to scavenge areas which if you are unlucky could make you waste more than you gather. It feels like the game stretches what could have been a concise experience into a 35+ hour slog and it bored me to tears at times.
All that aside this game looks and plays beautifully, I loved driving the car it controls wonderfully and having the game throw hazards at you and you needing to swerve and adapt makes you feel like you're living out some dystopian Baby Driver. The environments also had me hooked, there are key moments that are stunning and even the small drives from junction to junction could give off immaculate feels with its atmosphere.
Im at least happy with myself to see the game all the way through, cause I felt like i would've missed a tight knit vision executed well, even if that vision suffers being stretched out between boring gameplay loops
This game plays like a survival crafting/roguelike and while im not super opposed to those styles, they tire me out pretty quickly. Adding on the fact it has a semi-linear story that requires you to have the necessary resources to continue, and to get those resources you need to do side drives just to scavenge areas which if you are unlucky could make you waste more than you gather. It feels like the game stretches what could have been a concise experience into a 35+ hour slog and it bored me to tears at times.
All that aside this game looks and plays beautifully, I loved driving the car it controls wonderfully and having the game throw hazards at you and you needing to swerve and adapt makes you feel like you're living out some dystopian Baby Driver. The environments also had me hooked, there are key moments that are stunning and even the small drives from junction to junction could give off immaculate feels with its atmosphere.
Im at least happy with myself to see the game all the way through, cause I felt like i would've missed a tight knit vision executed well, even if that vision suffers being stretched out between boring gameplay loops
Fun relaxing for the first leg of the journey, but gets to be tedious and repetitive in the 2nd half, and the ending is not very satisfying.
I wanted to like this game more than I did. Visuals were great, concept was great, it just didn't hit the way I wanted it to. I would recommend this game to others because I just think it wasn't meant for me but when I discussed it with my friends they all had the same response.