Pacific Driveis one such game, my friends. Ironwood Studios’ spooky driving survival simulator is one of the most stressful and altogether infuriating video games I have ever played. Some of its quirks are clearly intentional. Others are, I suspect, less so. And yet, in spite of the fact it frequently fills me with a white-hot rage, I can’t ever seem to put it down for long.
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This garage serves as your home, your hub, and the place where you’ll always return to fix up your car after journeys.Pacific Driveis essentially a survival game with roguelike elements. You’ll craft upgrades for your car, outfit yourself with improvements that’ll help you stay alive longer, and outfit the garage itself with more useful tools that can aid you on your quest to escape “The Zone”.
Kepler Interactive
Pacific Drive’s core gameplay loop is simple. As soon as you arrive at the garage you basically use whatever you can get your hands on to get your car into a semi-decent shape. It’s vital to ensure the car is outfitted with functioning tyres, front and rear bumpers, and headlights so you can cut through the dark if you’re planning on night drives. Doors and panels are also a nice bonus, as they’ll afford you some extra protection from the instability of The Zone.
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Drives are very rarely as easy as they might seem on paper, of course. Aside from the ever-present threat of instability, which will eventually consume the entire map if you don’t move on quickly enough, there are also various “anomalies” to contend with. Patches of corrosive acid, clouds of lightning, exploding crash test dummies, pylon towers that shoot lightning;Pacific Drivenails that classic sci-fi approach of taking the everyday and twisting it into somethingwrong.
The anomalies work great for the most part, especially during your first few hours with the game. These threats are unknowable, elemental forces of sheer nature. But as you grow more used to the zone, they turn into little more than irritating obstacles, drained of almost all tension. In some of the more chaotic and challenging zones you’ll find anomalies either spring up so fast that you have no time to react to them and end up doing huge damage to your car… or they’re so large and easy to see that avoiding them is less about skill and more about simply stopping the car and driving around them. In either instance, any momentum you had is killed dead.
I also realised quite early on that anomalies are largely much less of a threat when you’re not in your car. There are, of course, ways for you to die when you’re not in your vehicle - namely from background radiation if you tarry too long. But each time I ventured from the safety of my car to explore a darkened house for supplies, I found myself less and less scared. Not because the game hadempoweredme to feel this way, but because I realised there’s actually very little to be concerned about when exploring on foot.Pacific Driveisn’t really supposed to be a horror in the traditional sense, but it was disappointing just how quickly parking up and getting out to explore the unknown was drained of any real tension.
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Kepler Interactive
I discovered early on that failure is the best teacher inPacific Drive, but it is not necessarily a kind one. Forgot to turn your headlights off before getting out of the car to explore? Your battery is going to drain faster. Didn’t put the car in park before exiting the vehicle? Hope you’ve got your running shoes on, because she’s rolling down that hill into a ditch. I spent my first chunk of time with the game doing everything I could to rush through the main quest markers and progress the story. Big mistake. If you don’t properly plan out your routes and journeys inPacific Drive, The Zone will eat you alive.
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Kepler Interactive
As much as there’s a focus on building, upgrading, and customising your dream car, it’s important you never get too attached to it. Bits are guaranteed to fall off constantly, and you’ll find yourself swapping out engines, doors, headlights, and more between runs quite often. It’s your very own ship of Theseus, though there are a number of cosmetic items that can persist between runs, including new steering wheels, dashboard toys, and bumper stickers for just about every Pride flag you can imagine.
Throughout your journeys, you’ll have to make sure your car stays in good condition, or as good as you can possibly keep it. Your engine will crap out, your tyres will puncture, and your car will randomly decide to make it so that the radio switches songs every time you turn on the wipers just to screw with you. Your car inPacific Driveis as much antagonist as protagonist. Yes, this can get very annoying at times, but it is also kind of The Point.
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Kepler Interactive
All of which keeps bringing me back to one key phrase: Mileage may vary.Pacific Driveis not a perfect game. It’s frequently too harsh with the player, its menus and systems can take a long while to get to grips with, and there’s a very strong chance you’ll get tired of listening to the same handful of songs on the radio while scavenging the same four or five types of buildings for supplies long before the journey reaches its final destination.
What you get out of this game will come down to entirely how much you’re willing to put into it. But if you buckle up and brace yourself for the occasional bump in the road,Pacific Drive’s innate style is more than enough to guarantee you one of 2024’s most exciting rides so far.
Pros:Moody aesthetic, great soundtrack, real sense of dread, driving feels tactile and natural
Cons:Fiddly menus, progression can be slow, occasionally feels a little too unfair
For fans of:Outer Wilds, No Man’s Sky, Firewatch
8/10: Excellent
Topics:Indie Games
