Have played around 5h of this and I have to say it's a bit of a grind so far. No, it not even close to stalker. It's true that i has anomalies but that's about it. I am also not a fan of the aesthetics, the music or the feel of the characters (probably because I went in expecting something closer to slavic hell is other slavs and not this indie folk introspective isolation while a bunch of dudes I don't care about bicker on the radio).
Still, the game has obvious merits and I couldn't give it less than 3 stars with a good conscience. I might play it a bit more, or maybe I should wait into getting a new computer that can run modern stuff.

I never thought I would enjoy the story in a game about driving. This is basically like Jalopy, except way more fleshed out in terms of scope. The sense of progression is fantastic and the looting and inventory management were superb, and, the story was very good and the characters were all very wonderful, I found myself engaged in their conversations at times and I would laugh with them here and there. The driving physics were fantastic also, every bump the car feels it has great and the weight transfer of the car when braking felt solid also. Overall, great game, but lacks challenge; I died maybe twice in my 40 hour playthrough.

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.

Probably one of the best survival games out there, owing mostly to the survival meters and aspects being localized to something external to the player character and therefore giving the impression that you're doing maintenance that makes sense instead of having to drink water every forty-five seconds. A lot of the elements such as the fuel and battery gauge are also fairly forgiving if you're not just leaving your car running with the headlights on. The world and design is interesting but the story feels a bit too esoteric and obscure in an attempt to compliment the eldritch science aesthetics. Feels like the story is trying to be more mysterious than it needs to be but the actual character content picks up that slack and does deliver and interesting supernatural story to be the basis of one far more grounded in survivors guilt and mourning.

Pacific Drive is a fun, unique game but has it's flaws. The overall experience however is solid. It provides a satisfying driving game with survivor elements included perfectly. Manually refilling your car and repairing your car is extremely fun. The game doesn't run out of ideas as well with randomly generated areas and a random assortment of anomalies.

However, the game has faults. The main one in my opinion is the progression system. Throughout the game you will find new materials and items which can help you craft new items. Firstly this requires a bit of a grind, but then all you unlock is either more storage or better armour which you will probably have to replace after a trip further out in the zone.

Solid game that just some tweaking and modifying to make the playthrough more enjoyable and entertaining.

I think I'm definitely a fan of these fantasy everyday games. Games where you do some sort of job or task that would be rudimentary and then apply some extra twist to it. Hardspace Shipbreaker was repairing spaceships, Mortuary Assistant pretty self explanatory, and now Pacific Drive where you repair and drive a car in a collapsing alternate dimension.

That's the basic loop of the game after all. You drive around in first person through areas that have been abandoned due to strange happenings in the story. Sections of "the pacific" that have been quarantined off due to a paranormal catastrophe. You find yourself stuck there and try to get yourself out with the help of some experts on "The Zone" who have stayed behind to study it.

That's the real meat of the narrative anyway, the characters who talk at you. As you go through the game, this ragtag few nerds reveal a bit about themselves through triumphs and troubles. It's fairly compelling learning more about them and how they interact and why they're there at all. More than can be said for you yourself. Your character and circumstances are, pardon the pun, along for the ride and a vehicle to move the story along to find out more about these folk. There's some vague intrigue about the space you're in and how everything got fucked up but they don't go into it too much.

As I say though, the game consists of setting out on a route, driving around the weird environment of pillars rising from the ground, exploding mannequins, and radiation everywhere. You usually have some sort of thing you're looking for to switch on or collect and bring back to the "home base". As you're out though, you can also scavenge the abandoned areas and collect various materials. Then when you do go back to base, you can make new things for the car.

Maintaining and upgrading the car so you can have a better time driving around is the fun of the game I think. As you drive through places you might wreck the car hitting things or getting flat tires or something in the environment electrocutes you or a storm passes by and messes with the car's systems. Fortunately, you probably scavenged when you were out and now back at the base you get to craft replacement doors and panels and tires for the car. Eventually you gain upgrades and improve the parts or even the engine and can add things like more space or a hand break. It's not like super in depth mechanic stuff but it's enough to make you feel accomplished.

The upgrades, by the way, are what make the game extra exciting. To acquire blueprints for car/garage upgrades, you need to collect energy from out in The Zone. The tricky thing is, you get this energy from points on the map that keep the area you're in stable. So you remove these stability cores for upgrades but then reality starts to collapse around you. After you get enough cores, you can summon a portal to get back to base but you have to FLOOR IT to outrun the Fortnite-esque circle storm closing around the map and deteriorating everything it passes. It's really quite thrilling and hectic when you get into it and you're like missing a door or two and have a flat tire and you just PRAY you get to the pillar of light representing your way back to safety. Good stuff.

That said, there's a lot of accessibility options to counter how hard you want it for yourself. The game has almost survival game levels of things to worry about. You have your own health, the car parts health, the car's battery and fuel. Even watching out for radiation depending on how much damage your car takes or if your car skids on wet roads. The accessibility options can balance these things out. Maybe you just want to focus on driving around and some upgrades for the car as you do the story?

That's what I did towards the end. I put some of them on to make it less tedious to get through the rest. I enjoyed the game but I got to a point where I just wanted to finish it up. I didn't go as far as making myself or the car invulnerable but having things like keeping yourself safe while in the car or not having to worry about fuel saves some time. I do enjoy little things like upkeep and siphoning fuel on the road to keep it going.

That's the one thing about this game. It's not really something to be rushed. Played it in bits over the last two months or so. As you explore deeper into the zone your routes have you stopping in more and more areas. If you try to just rush through without any accessibility stuff on you get a severely damaged car and no parts to repair or replace. There's a "friendly dumpster" that will dispense some materials after each run but it's not something to be dependent on. The game really has you play by its rules and pacing and it's most enjoyable when you just give in and go with it.

That said, I'm done with it for now. I finally got to the end of the story and rolled credits. Due to different circumstances of the story, only the least interesting character is left to talk in my ear as I drive around exploring and documenting the weird things in The Zone. Just not something I wanna do right now. I could definitely see coming back to it at some point for a cozy supernatural hellscape drive but after a couple months I've just had my fill.

It's definitely a great game but would only recommend to people who like doing the more mundane type tasks in games with a slight twist. The fun characters make the story fun and you get as much out of it as you put in. Check it out if that sounds like your thing!

I think this is the first survival-crafting game I've played, so there may have been a learning curve here for me that other players could have skipped. It took me a few runs to see the loop of looting and repairing your car fully set in, but once I fully understood it I think that was the point where I began to lose interest with the game. I never really felt much sense of satisfaction when I completed a run, and I was especially annoyed when I would screw up the ending of a run after the rest of it had gone smoothly. I get the sense that these mechanics are intrinsic to a game like this though, so I'm not sure if I was ever going to play this to completion.

That said, there are a lot of things I do like quite a bit about this. I actually really like methodically getting the car ready for the next run, even though it is literally just working through a checklist. Driving and interacting with/via the car itself also felt novel in a game of this type, and though the ends of runs where I failed were frustrating, the ones where I succeeding were almost always exhilarating (a tough line to walk). Expanding on that, the atmosphere surrounding everything in Pacific Drive is what hooked me initially, and kept me playing for the 10 or so hours that I did stick with it.

Merhaba öncelikle şunu söylemek istiyorum. Oyun süresi bir araba sürme simülatörü için çok uzun olmuş. Oyunu ilk fragmanı çıktığından beri takip ediyordum. Adamlar nedense hiçbir fragmanda bu fast travel sistemini bırakın göstermeyi göz kırpmamış bile amk. Oyunun full açık dünya olacağını tahmin etmiştim neyseki önyargılı bir insan olmadığımdan dolayı oyunu denemek istedim. Ve 5-6 saat akıp gitti. Oyunun zaten çok klişe bir hikayesi var. (Spoilersız) Radyodaki insanlar sana komut veriyor. Oyunun hikayesi yok yani sıfır ara sahne bir tane bile yok. Nedense oyun overrated bir şekilde çıkış yaptı. Halbuki çok söylenecek çok eleştirilecek yanı var. Neyse oyun tarihine bir balon daha girmiş oldu. Oynanırmı? ben vaktimi 16-17 saat boşa geçirmek isterim diyen varsa benim gibi salaklar oynayabilir.

Not much to like here, atmosphere was ok. There's no actual fun/relaxation in the driving (it's actually slghtly infuriating) it just involves going a few metres slowly, avoiding obstacles, until you reach the next building/abandoned car to loot and then fast travelling to the next area of procedurally generated buildings that are copy pasted again. In theory if you wanted to avoid this tedium there are a good range of difficulty settings to remove damage, fuel etc (This removes your ability to unlock achievements if you care about that) but i believe you still have to loot for parts. Otherwise, the controls are strange but i think you can get used to it, can't comment on the story as i didn't stick with it for long but the voice acting seemed ok and finally, there are tons of bugs but i don't usually let it effect my ratings in the hopes they will be fixed over time as it is a new game.

Pacific Drive is essentially Jalopy with more sauce. Starting out with this little shitcan strapped together with nothing but duct tape and a few prayers, you head out on a road trip into a beautiful depiction of the Olympic Peninsula.

I've personally driven those winding highways in a shitcan of my own - cruising through the pouring rain, the dreary morning barely lit by my shitty, clouded headlights; there's a very specific eeriness winding through those trees. Pacific Drive takes that innate emotion of the region and adds in legitimate paranormal threats and intrigue, the result is an incredibly compelling locale to base the core loop of the game.

Ducking into little shacks, scrounging for little bits of scrap, dodging the anomalies, racing towards the extraction, then heading back to the garage to upgrade the shitcan, my shitcan. Admittedly, Pacific Drive is often not exhilarating in its moment-to-moment gameplay, it's much more interested in building atmosphere as you crawl across the terrain. I doubt everyone will enjoy the gameplay here, and maybe I'm just too biased regarding the setting, but I'm overjoyed that a game like Pacific Drive exists. If you're a fan of titles like Jalopy, The Long Drive, or My Summer Car, do yourself a favor a give this one a try, I'm sure you'll fall in love.

For a couple of weeks, the core loop of this game had me hooked. I wasn't even trying to progress the main story, I would just go out on runs, scavenge a couple materials, repair the car, rinse, repeat. And really, it's diagnosing the quirks and performing repairs that kept me playing. It's tedious, it can be boring at times, but I got some serious satisfaction out of fixing every little problem. It scratches the same itch as something like Powerwash Simulator.

I can see people easily bouncing off of this game if they don't gel with that loop, because everything else is fine at best. The controls are wonky, navigating the menus takes some adjusting, the story is average. Look up gameplay (you always should), and pick this up if you think restoring the car looks like something you'd enjoy.

I generally enjoyed the game, but the gameplay loop did begin to get a bit stale towards the latter half of the game.

The atmosphere is great, the music is great, and slowly upgrading your car and base is fun. The story is just kinda there and the ending left a lot to be desired.

A pretty good first game for a studio, if a little rough around the edges.

I was pretty onboard with the vibes of Pacific Drive from the start. While it began and maintained as an oppressive "What the f is going on??" vibe, you slowly begin to piece together some understandings of how the Zone functioned. Combined with satisfying upgrade and crafting mechanics, it kept me quite entertained for its roughly 20 hour run time.

To start things off, I'm not much of a survival game person. I eventually find a lot of these types of games rather aimless or frustrating to the point where it loses me. I was surprised to find myself not in this situation (for the most part) in this game. I always had the next thing I'm looking forward to getting and was able to make decent progress towards that objective. While death is quite punishing, you can definitely alleviate some of these design decisions with generous accessibility options.

Combined with a satisfying upgrade system is a semi-roguelike system where you make "runs" to collect resources and make it further into the Zone. I did notice towards the latter half of the game that running earlier zones just to collect some early-game resources was rather tedious. But, as you begin to understand the anomalies that pepper the Zone and make longer trips, the game turned into quite a satisfying loop.

What accompanies these loops in the Zone is a narrative that features several disembodied voices that supports you as you make your way around the Zone. While you never seem them, I noticed myself getting quite attached to these characters as I went along. While I can totally see why some folks might find their presence annoying, I really enjoyed the light-hearted banter in such an oppressive environment.

Finally, the upgrade system and narrative comes to a head in the final stretch of the game. I did notice towards the end of the game that the amount of endgame resources required to get some of these upgrades became, for the lack of a better word, a tedious chore. Combined with an ending that ends up not really explaining anything and just kind of...ends, I can see why a lot of people were disappointed with the ending. For me, I realized that by the end of the game that I cared more about the characters rather than the Zone itself, and I'm glad the game structured the main mission line to not make some of these late-game upgrades a necessity to finish the game as it probably would've ruined the pacing.

Overall, I'm mildly surprised by the fact that I enjoyed Pacific Drive so much. I found that the game is pretty uncompromising in what it set out to do. I'm sure as soon as players noticed how meticulous Ironwood has built out the player's interactions with the car (For example, you can hurt yourself by dropping the rear door on your end), a lot of players would have bounced off. But for me, the satisfying car upgrade / loot run loop, the familiar and unsettling vibes of the Zone set in my home of Washington and the cast of characters allowed me to enjoy an experience that I haven't quite seen in other games. I look forward to what they do next!

📌 RUS Version
Стэндалон игра про Буханку из «Metro: Exodus» не удалась

Очень тихо и незаметно прошёл релиз «Pacific Drive», и вот почему:

Игра не может предложить ничего больше концепции "ты мастурбируешь лут, кастомайзишь своё корыто и катаешься по тихоокеанскому побережью вокруг аномалий".

Это всё. Никаких откровений, сюрпризов, интересного нарратива, крепкого сюжета или глубокого геймплея.

📝 Здесь есть множество скучных записок и главный герой, который настолько "никто", что у него не только голоса, но и тела нет. Помимо него есть ещё три заэкрановых персонажа: постоянно что-то болтают, и только по радио. Их озвучивают классные актёры, но играть им особо нечего. Все сюжетные линии вроде подходят к концу, но в итоге сам сюжет по сути это — даже не громкий, а — просто «пук».

🎮 По геймплею игра сама не понимает, чем она хочет быть.

Дефолтный режим в какой-то момент становится перегруженным различными переменными и хочется его поменять. Но других сложностей или режимов в игре нет. Есть огромный список модификаций-читов с настройкой отдельных пунктов от «негаснущих фар» до «неполучения урона от конкретной стихии».

То есть, мне не совсем понятно, как сам разработчик видел этот геймплей.

Потому что если всё это поотключать и чиллить на лесных пейзажах, ну хз, они не настолько грандиозные или ламповые. Визуал приятный, но слишком дженерик, чтобы им наслаждаться. Да и никакого геймплея, кромке жмяканья на газ больше не останется.

В общем, играть в увлекательное "сам себе геймдизайнер за свои же 1500р" я не захотел и остался на дефолте. Но уже через пару абзацев будет твист.

✨ Аномалии не работают комплексно и не создают уникальных ситуаций — хотя это выживач — жанр, где игрока закидывают в песочницу с экосистемами, которые генерят ему истории —. Они либо разбросаны то тут, то там, либо сваливаются разом большой пачкой и заталкивают тебя в гробан.

Через пару часов это уже начинает сильно заёбывать. Особенно, когда до сюжетных участков трассы нужно добираться каждый раз заново через миллион одинаковых развилок — это же авто-рогалик —, где ты просто давишь тапку и едешь к воротам на следующий уровень.

А когда на 70% сюжета ставят гриндволл...

На этом моменте я решил сбавить градус духоты ♨️, и воспользовался всеми возможными внутриигровыми читами, подрубил трейнер и проехал до концовки — ни о чём не жалею. Очень редко так делаю, почему бы и нет. Так бы я её вообще не прошёл, а досматривать на ютубе не хотелось.

В общем, кастомайзить машинку было прикольно, но оно того не стоит.

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📌 ENG Version
The Standalon game about UAZ-Bukhanka from "Metro: Exodus" failed

The release of "Pacific Drive" was very quiet and unnoticed, and that's why:

The game cannot offer anything more than the concept of "you masturbate loot, customize your trough and ride along the Pacific coast around anomalies."

That is all. No revelations, surprises, interesting narrative, strong plot or deep gameplay.

📝 There are a lot of boring notes and the main character, who is so "nobody" that he does not only have a voice, but also a body. Besides him, there are three other off-screen characters: they are constantly talking, and only on the radio. They are voiced by great actors, but they don't have much to play. All the storylines seem to be coming to an end, but in the end the plot itself is — in fact not even loud but —, just a "fart".

🎮 According to the gameplay, the game itself does not understand what it wants to be.

The default mode at some point becomes overloaded with various variables and you want to change it. But there are no other difficulties or modes in the game. There is a huge list of cheat modifications with the setting of individual items from "non-extinguishing headlights" to "not receiving damage from a specific element".

That is, it is not entirely clear to me how the developer himself saw this gameplay.

Because if you turn it all off and chill on forest landscapes, well, they are not so grandiose or lamp-like. The visual is pleasant, but too generic to enjoy. And there will be no more gameplay, there will be no more gas pressure on the edge.

In general, I did not want to play the exciting "my own game designer for my own 30 bucks" and remained in default. But in a couple of paragraphs there will be a twist.

✨ Anomalies do not work comprehensively and do not create unique situations — although this is a survival genre where the player is thrown into a sandbox with ecosystems that generate stories for him. They're either scattered here and there, or they come down in a big pile at once and shove you into a coffin.

After a couple of hours, it's already starting to fuck up a lot. Especially when you need to get to the plot sections of the route every time again through a million identical forks — this is an auto-bagel — where you just press the slipper and go to the gate to the next level.

And when they put grindwall on 70% of the plot...

At this point, I decided to reduce the degree of stuffiness ♨️, and took advantage of all possible in-game cheats, cut the trainer and drove to the end - I don't regret anything. I very rarely do this, why not. So I wouldn't have passed it at all, and I didn't want to watch it on YouTube.

In general, it was fun to customize the machine, but it's not worth it.

Joguei em torno de 4 horas e posso afirmar que, de início, é no mínimo interessante. Mas, infelizmente, não posso continuar a jogar. Meu PC não aguenta rodar o game de forma decente durante as missões, e colocar todas as configurações no "Low" faz o jogo parecer uma massinha de modelar, horrível. Isso tira toda a ambientação do local, que é super importante pro jogo, pelo que deu a entender na história e no contexto geral do que aconteceu e do que tá rolando na Península Olímpica. Quando eu tiver um PC que tanke mais, talvez eu volte para jogar, mas por ora realmente não tem como ter uma experiência boa com esse péssimo desempenho.

Pacific Drive is the only craft-type game I've been able to chill with in the past half-decade.

Gathering resources isn't a slow and boring chore, it's an optimization problem. Blitzing through every zone as fast as possible while snagging supplies as you go feels like mapping a space in a way that's almost like an arena shooter.

The final stretch is a little wonky, and the narrative climax didn't hit for me - a very "wait, that's it? it's over?" sort of ending - but I'm glad I saw it through to the end.

If you enjoy "survival" games at all, you should absolutely take this paranormal station wagon for a spin.

Pacific Drive - I wanted to love you, but at the end of the road I just liked you.

First, the good - the atmosphere, story, and music are all top notch. I enjoyed learning the lore of the Zone and figuring out how the characters were related to what was going on. The sense of place was unparalleled, and while I played there were moments I really felt like I was driving around the woods of my home state. The music, largely performed by local WA artists, was great and reasonably varied.

However, the good was somewhat undercut by the bad. There came times when the story "paused" because I needed to do a few drives to gather materials in previously-visited zones, and during these times I found it much easier to notice little annoyances in the gameplay and graphics. I found that some, maybe even many, of the gameplay systems became tiresome when I had to grind resources to engage with them. The music, while great, was limited to only 15 tracks. Because of this, at the end of my 22-hour run I had heard every song numerous times, and I'd grown tired of most of them. The performance was only consistent in its inconsistency, and the fluctuating frame rate negatively impacted my immersion in an otherwise deeply atmospheric game.

Overall, the initial impression was strong. After the first hour I would have rated this game 5 stars. After 22 hours, the magic had faded (but not vanished!). I still loved the story (despite a slightly lackluster conclusion) and the immersion this game offered was great, but undercooked gameplay elements and lack of variety eventually dragged the game down for me.

I'd recommend this game to any Washington local, or to people who enjoy exploration-driven games and can forgive some clunkiness.