Pacific Drive developed by Ironwood Studios and published by Kepler Interactive is available now on PC and PlayStation 5.
Pacific Drive is a survival game in which players are thrown into the Olympic Peninsula, an area created by Arda and the government. The two of them spent years in the zone with strange unexplained anomalies. Eventually, the zone became too dangerous ARDA and the government scientists had to evacuate so they sealed it off from the outside world. Scientists were creating LIM Technology and sadly it didn’t exactly go as planned and it unleashed hell upon this one area that kept expanding as time went on. This is where you, the Driver come in. On a normal driving route near the zone walls, things start to get weird and you are abruptly teleported into the zone. Once in the zone, a strange station wagon is waiting for you. Along the way you meet a small cast of characters via radio transmissions that have been stuck in the zone for a very long time and want to help you leave. Once in the safety of the garage the hub zone where you can add lots of new and fun gadgets, the story starts opening up more the mysterious station wagon that saved you has a more sinister underlying energy that you slowly learn about along the way. The story in Pacific Drive is perfect to me every little bit of information fed from logs and audio recordings was full of explanations about the goings on in the zone. Players will also get a lot of information in the story by Oppy, Francis and Tobias who really set the atmosphere on their harrowing experiences within the zone. The pacing was absolutely brilliant and I really enjoyed learning more about the Olympic Peninsula as I passed through it.
Pacific Drive feels like a unique game to me having the vehicle as your survival tool and it living with you every step of the way, driving along mysterious zones looking for resources and figuring out what is going on I just couldn’t get enough of it all. The road trips are incredibly dangerous each section you explore from the map changes each time you visit, whether it has different anomalies, resources, or buildings apart from the road almost everything changes which is really refreshing to me nothing ever got repetitive I just wanted to see this living and ever changing environment thrive but beware, it’s also very dangerous, especially for your car. Each environment you explore has different hazards, from horrifying-looking dummies that can explode when you get too close, to parts of the terrain lifting from the ground there is so much going on and while sometimes these hazards can end a good run quickly, it’s just incredible to see and experience. There have been one or two times though where you have the car at 100% health and you have a really good haul, but your fuel runs out while escaping to the gate to get back to the garage to escape the storm and you lose everything. Don’t be put off by that though, luckily you can go back and collect everything you dropped or in the extensive gameplay customisation, you can turn things like fuel consumption, and battery depletion and drop loot off it is fantastic to see such a wealth of options to customise the game to your liking. The car means everything to your survival so you will need to keep it in good condition throughout the journey this means fixing it up in the garage, developing new parts like doors, side panels, wheels and more and making sure the battery and fuel are replenished. As you get further into the game, it becomes a lot more dangerous with each level zone you pass the hardest one I found was the fuel evaporation trait I’d run out of fuel so fast and have to race on foot trying to syphon petrol from vehicles and race to the gate before the giant anomalous storm consumed me, it provides such an adrenaline rush and while losing all that ARC energy can be frustrating, it’s never a dull moment. ARC energy in Pacific Drive is used to research new recipes for the car and garage and there are three different versions stable, unstable and corrupted. These will help you in your journey to strengthen everything as you travel, but beware that when you collect these, the environment tends to fight back. You will have to collect a lot of resources to keep your car in good condition and to progress the story, Pacific Drive has a lot you can use to your advantage and it is quite fun exploring all of these different tools with different functions, however, the condition does deplete fairly fast.
Pacific Drive provides so many different and unique designs, all the anomalies look incredible and a lot of work has gone into the design. Obviously, these things have to look the part and they really do, especially the dummies known as tourists, they’re like Weeping Angels from Dr Who, you’ll be minding your own business and then turn around and they’re all around you, waiting for something, and as you get deeper into the zone, they get all the more terrifying. The environments also change as you go further in, the deeper you go, the more nightmarish, but exploring these zones is incredible due to the hard work that has gone into it all. Driving around in these locations never felt like a chore due to how it all looked, the graphics are truly great. Though sadly on the PlayStation 5, I did get some slow down and some FPS drops here and there but nothing that game-breaking apart from once when the zone was truly just trying to kill me however it could and it slowed to a really bad crawl, I had to logout and log back in. Pacific Drive also comes with its own radio station and there is nothing like driving through a bad storm listening to some really well-chosen tracks, there is something so relaxing about just driving in this game with the radio cranked on, even with the world trying to end you. The voice cast is fantastic as well, you can truly feel the emotion in the voices, you never physically meet any characters so this is all on radio transmission alone and Francis, Tobias and Oppy truly made it a special experience.
Verdict
While Pacific Drive hasn’t been everyone’s cup of tea with mixed reviews, to me, it does redefine the survival genre, this is easily the best game of 2024 and it is going to be hard to top. It has everything that makes it perfect, the zone constantly changing, the story, the gameplay, everything just blends together so well and I never wanted the experience to end. In my eyes, a game that creates such a strong bond between the vehicle and you was truly special to me and learning more about it all was intensely rewarding every step of the way. You then have the way you can customise the game to your liking, Pacific Drive rarely did a thing wrong and it is a game that I truly connected with and got lost in and it’s been a while since I’ve gotten that lost in a game, every bit of free time I had went into playing this absolutely fantastic experience, I truly hope we see more from Iron Wood Studios because I don’t want this to be over. If you want something new and exciting, I can’t recommend this experience enough. I need more!
9.5/10
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