Cars are inanimate objects, but if you drive one, you've undoubtedly formed a relationship with it. Perhaps you've named your vehicle after the way it looks; maybe you'd be more concerned if it didn't have that indiscernible rattle; it could be falling to pieces, but you've never known a more dependable companion. Cars feel as though they have a soul, and Pacific Drive knows it. This survival game's special sauce is in perfectly capturing the bond between car and driver.
The game takes place in North America's Olympic Peninsula in 1998, decades after the government established the Olympic Exclusion Zone. Walled off from the world, it was once home to breakthrough science, but experiments spiralled out of control, filling the entire region with radiation and other, much stranger, threats. It's this ever-changing, uninhabitable place in which you find yourself, and the only thing around you that can provide a modicum of protection is a mysterious old station wagon.
Handily, within a pocket of stability is a garage, once belonging to Oppy, a brilliant but jaded scientist begrudgingly helping you over the radio. It's here where you're able to fix up the car, craft upgrades, and plot your next excursion into the zone. This is the game's core loop; with a splash of roguelike randomness, you go out on drives through a series of junctions, warp back to the safety of the garage, and use your gathered resources to improve the car and explore further next time.
It works very well indeed. Maintaining and improving the vehicle in particular provides a great sense of progression. Every door, panel, wheel, and even the engine can be replaced, or superseded by something better, but that may not always be possible. Depending on what resources you were able to bring back with you, repairing existing parts may have to suffice. The game settles into a knife-edge balance — you probably won't have enough materials for everything, so you'll have to simply make do with what's available. Fortunately, a friendly dumpster will offer you some helpful supplies in a pinch, and the garage always has a wrecked car you can chop up for some basic resources.
When you're ready, you'll use a map of the randomly generated zone to plot a course. Out on a drive, you need to be aware of your surroundings at all times — not only to look out for buildings containing precious materials, but also to spot anomalies that'll hinder, and potentially jeopardise, your journey. Anomalies come in various forms. Tourists are creepy mannequins that sometimes move when you're not looking, and explode when you touch them. The Can Opener is a buzzsaw that cuts through the ground and can wreck your car's tyres. If an Abductor spots your wagon, it'll latch onto it and drag it all over the place, steering you into rocks or other anomalies. The zone has a thick, eerie atmosphere, and its unpredictability lends it a real sense of danger as you seek out supplies.
Things only get more treacherous as you probe deeper into the zone, but of course, steadily unlocked upgrades mean you'll just about be equipped to handle it. Wherever you end up, your ticket back to safety is finding Anchors. These contain the energy required to summon a portal back to the garage, but doing so also calls in a raging storm you'll need to outpace as you dash for the exit. It behooves you to grab more Anchors than you need, because it's this energy that's vital for unlocking essential upgrades. Expanded storage, better vehicle parts, new survival tools, car expansions onto which you can bolt yet more equipment — there are lots of ways to make your life easier. However, you'll need certain materials, Anchor energy, and possibly to have scanned particular anomalies before you can have them.
In fact, the game's granular nature sometimes stalls the fun. On one hand, turning the car piece by piece from a ramshackle rambler to a Mad Max-looking monster, and gradually unlocking valuable upgrades is a deeply gratifying process. On the other hand, scanning every anomaly and object you find, being unsure where to find certain resources, and navigating lots of very dense menus isn't. Pacific Drive is a complex and layered survival game that can take dozens of hours to play — not inherently a bad thing, especially with a story offering some intriguing context that'll keep you going. However, with its ambitious detail and systems, it can occasionally get in its own way.
The UI in general is quite complicated (and full of tiny text). On PS5 using a pad, getting through the menus and inventories is one thing, but even just highlighting one item presents you with numerous interactions. For example, looking at the driver door, you can press R1 to get in the driver seat; hold R1 to simply open or shut the door; hold Triangle to remove the door from the car (and hold R2 to install it); press L1 to get a rundown of its condition; and hold the touchpad to see a logbook entry. Basically everything has these fiddly controls to some degree, and it takes some getting used to. Even driving the car, you need to turn the ignition key, then put the shifter in drive before setting off, and with these actions being so close together, you'll likely fumble this process. It all helps with immersion, and all the diegetic UI when you're behind the wheel is great, but broadly, the controls can feel cumbersome.
The only other thing going against Pacific Drive is its technical performance. We rather like the game's stylised, softly textured look, but on PS5 the frame rate struggles. At times it hits what feels like 60 frames-per-second, but more often than not it's noticeably below that. There are also load screens as you move between locations; while not too long, they're conspicuous on a system known for speedy loading. It's far from unplayable, but not the smoothest ride either.
Despite its flaws, though, the game — much like the car — will grow on you. As you become accustomed to its quirks and intricacies, what you're left with is a tough but engrossing survival action title packed with personality. Cobbling together a vehicle that'll more or less hold together as you delve into a deadly environment proves to be a highly compelling hook, and you'll come away from the experience feeling like you and that bodged-together station wagon can overcome anything.
Conclusion
Pacific Drive is an ambitious and rewarding debut from Ironwood Studios. It's an unusual combination of factors that all coalesce; roguelike exploration, deep and challenging survival mechanics, an interesting narrative to follow, and a central vehicle that brings everything together. Fiddly controls and complex UI mean it's not free from annoyances, but the pleasure found in incrementally upgrading the car and throwing it into the unknown trumps the setbacks. It might be an arduous journey at times, but it's definitely worth the trip.
Comments 34
As always, let me know if have any questions about the game!
Nice to know that it lives up to expectations (somewhat at least). I’m a bit choc-a-bloc for games atm but will add it to the wishlist for a decent sale price.
I saw that top gear reference in the link. Nice touch
too many survival games
What a great start to the year to own a PlayStation. This, Helldivers 2 and Final Fantasy all before March.
I have been really looking forward to this ever since it was announced. It’s a really cool concept and happy to see it looks like a reasonably good execution as well. Will definitely be picking this up when I have a bit more time next month.
I read that headline in Jeremy Clarkson's voice
There's gonna be a run on Station Wagons after this launch.
Great review. I’m glad to see this game turn out well. I’ve been interested in it ever since its first reveal. I’ll definitely be picking it up and adding it to my backlog.
I’ll get this, it looks like my sort of thing. What with Stalker 2 on the way, it looks like ‘mysterious alien zone’ is 2024’s equivalent of ‘time loop’.
This looks great. I think I'll wait for a sale, but, I'd probably get it now if the next months of my gaming schedule weren't already banished to the Shadow Realm by a certain spikey-headed RPG.
I played the demo for this during Steam's Next Fest and I really liked it.
Performance on the demo was really bad though despite my specs being way above the recommended, and the Community Tab on Steam indicated I wasn't the only one with that problem. I see the inconsistent performance carried over to the console version as well.
@Quintumply Does it have a platinum trophy? How's the list overall?
Just pre-ordered it, been on my radar for a while but didn't know it was out this week.
@Quintumply is there a satisfying narrative arc in the game?
I somehow both like what I'm seeing, but hope at some point there's a little more life to the game, like something living chasing you rather than just evading a storm while funky terrain effects are going off.
@Quintumply Not a question, but a PSA for people that might be interested in the game, but don’t like some of the survival and roguelike parts of it.
If the PS5 has accessibility options the same as it does on the demo I played on my Steam Deck*, a lot of things can be tweaked or disabled. This includes:
I mention all of this for the people like me, who like a lot of roguelikes and survival games in look and feel, but end up getting bored of making slow incremental progress. It’s made my decision to eventually buy this game a lot easier, knowing that I can finish it no matter how hard the game is.
*For complete transparency, I had to turn every graphics option to the lowest setting just to get the game to run — and thus didn’t actually play past the tutorial because it looked and ran so bad — so I cannot speak to how these accessibility options work in practice, or how good the game is to play with them enabled, and I also might be remembering some of them wrong, so don’t take my word as gospel 😊
Sounds good, I have it pre-ordered, but just started Banishers, so I hope some patches land till I get to it.
@JaphyRider It does have a Platinum Trophy! The list is good — there's a bunch for reaching certain points in the story, some fun stuff like reaching 88mph and escaping the zone while airborne, and then completionist stuff like scanning everything to fill out the logbook and unlocking all upgrades. I think it'd be reasonably tough to 100% but definitely doable.
@clicky The narrative throughout the game is pretty cool, yeah. It sets up an interesting mystery, and gradually expands the lore of the zone and so on.
Nothing living really chases you down as such, but there are sentient anomalies that'll attach themselves to the car or hinder you if you don't evade them.
@Impossibilium Yes, this is very much worth pointing out, so thank you for that. The game does have lots of accessibility options that can make things easier (or in some cases harder, if you like). I stuck with the default settings but yes, lots of ways to customise the challenge. Worth pointing out that some of those will disable Trophies, though.
@Quintumply Is there any indication that VRR has been implemented?
@SgtTruth It’s only for PS5 & Steam
@quintumply does this have steering wheel support?
So glad this looks decent, been looking forwards to this since I first heard of it
@Quintumply Thanks for the info!
@Quintumply Great review! I’ve had my eye on this since it was announced and I’m so excited that your review was so positive.
Are there hunger and thirst systems? Do you have to hunt for food at all? Those mechanics often ruin a game for me as I don’t want to spend a third of my session killing innocent squirrels or something.
@croaker_1 I don’t see an option for it in the game’s settings, and sadly don’t have a VRR ready TV to test it on anyway. Sorry!
@Frmknst Hard to say exactly, the story is there throughout but you’re free to do as many runs through the zone as you like, so I guess it’s sort of up to you what the ratio is! The story plays out while you’re playing so technically it’s all gameplay.
@ILikeStake I see no options for steering wheels in the settings. I would say it doesn’t, because you spend a lot of time out of the car, which would be hard to control on a wheel.
@glassmusic No, you don’t have to worry about hunger or thirst. That would’ve put me off too. As mentioned earlier in the comments, there are actually ways to make the survival aspect easier, like disabling damage to you or the car, or even making it so you can’t die. The default level of challenge felt good to me, though.
I'll wishlist it for a sale, but it looks very interesting. I love survival games.
Been interested in this for a while especially after driving through Olympic National Park couple of years ago but at the same time I'm kinda put off by the stylized graphics a-la Life is Strange.
I can lock all my doors, it's the only way to live in cars
One for six months when it's in a sale and patched up. Thank you to the people who buy at full price and beta test before I get in.
Can I just make a comment On Push review scoring policy. Apologies if it's been discussed before. 5/10 is average. That would mean that this is the most review score used. Is that correct? Also, not bad is 6/10. I think 'okay' would be better word to describe 6/10. 'Not Bad' and 'average' mean the same to me and there should be more distinction.
Really intrigued by this game but might hold out for a 60fps mode (if there is one planned).
@R_Ryder Average does not mean median. No site reviews all games released, so you can't assume an average score would be the most common.
@Old_Man_Harper if only stalker 2 was coming to playstation
Here it is six months later. I picked up the disk version, and I've been playing it more than is healthy. I'm obsessed. The game itself would tell me that's a bad sign.
Half the time I'm also frustrated, yelling at the car if I forgot to put it in park, or at the bunnies attacking it (they're called bunnies, but they're not furry, that's all I'll say), or at the fact that it seems when the bunnies attack it the car goes out of park on its own. I wonder if I can fix that when I get back to the shop?
If you like arcade-feel driving games, this is a blast. There's view freedom while you're driving, so you can peer out the left or right window at speed (and run into something), but that helps you see the map on the passenger's seat or the health display on the dash or the thing you're passing that you definitely need to stop to scan or pick up or both.
Biggest issue is you need to scan everything, which you can only do on foot. Failing to do that will lock upgrades you will need - and it may not be easy to figure out what you need to find again so you can scan it again.
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