It's an interesting take on the survival gathering game. Your car is your lifeline and your mobile base. Early on it's interesting but there was a certain lack of variety in the gameplay. And just some friction.

Partly why I stopped playing is that I needed to complete a mission, but you can't just go from your base to the mission, you have to go from map to map. For this one I had to go 3 maps deep and I ultimately end up failing the mission due to something popping out of the ground I couldn't avoid. Ultimately wrecking my car and losing quite a bit of stuff I had spent the last 90 minutes collecting. And the game wasn't grabbing me enough to do it again.

A toolbelt would have also helped, half my inventory was just tools.

The concept is neat but it could use some iteration to keep it interesting after the first few hours. The story has been done before and the concept of voices over the radio explaining everything isn't particularly compelling.

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

I was immediately hooked when I started playing! the core gameplay loop is immensely satisfying and it took a while for the thrill of looting and building up my car to wear off. the radio soundtrack is amazing! I also loved that you get a bunch of different pride flags to put on your car right away.

the story end up feeling a little boring, and the pacing of the game feels off. by the end of the game some of the story missions felt tedious to me and made the game end on a bit of a low note. overall I enjoyed my time with this really unique game!

With a lot of survival/looter games I tend to find myself drawn in by the concept before being turned away by the execution and Pacific Drive does just that for me. There are aspects of the game I like, and with a tweak here and an addition there I feel like I would really enjoy this game, but at the moment it just comes across flat. (Get it? like a tire)

Like all games of this genre there's the gameplay loop: go out into the world, gather resources, return home, upgrade yourself/things, venture out further into the world. Pacific Drive is the same. You fix up your car, head out into "The Zone" (no really), gather supplies to fix your car with, come back, fix your car, and head out again. The problem with Pacific Drive is it feels like it's a true loop. As in, I feel like i'm in the exact same spot once i've exhausted my resources as I was before I went out to get them in the first place. There's no real survival aspect, there's no base building or expanding to do that I came across. The resources you gather are mainly to repair the damage caused by going out on your latest run. You drive car, you fix car, you repeat. Now driving the car, gathering up stuff and exploring IS fun, I just wish it felt rewarding to do it.

Now you might remember how I said earlier that part of the "traditional loop" of these sorts of game involves venturing out further and further on each run. This brings me to my next issue with Pacific Drive which is that venturing out further consists of leaving the garage, hitting a loading screen, and the game putting you into a small map and telling you that you have gone further into The Zone (No... really). The game takes away the anticipation that should be building with passing familiar areas on your way to unexplored territory, by just putting you out there. And after you've picked up your supplies how do you think you get back the garage? Why it's another loading screen, once again taking away tension that should build with having your supplies and now needing to be able to make it back home with them.

I hate to sound like i'm just hating on this game. I do like the idea, I like the environment, I like the car, I liked playing the game up until the point where i felt like I had experienced most, if not all, of what the game had to offer. I feel like the addition of something else to put your supplies towards would serve the game well, like NPCs who need them to survive, bringing a choice of "do I give these to other people and leave my car lacking for the next run, or potentially harm others so my car is in top shape?" For the time being I think i'm done with Pacific Drive, but i'm hoping as time goes on there will be a reason to come back to it.

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 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!

📌 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.

feel like i got catfished. the gameplay loop here entirely kills this for me - i was under the impression Pacific Drive was gonna be a linear(ish) journey to the heart of the Stalker Zone but it ends up being an almost roguelike experience centred around going out on missions from your garage hubworld. it's more of a loot-centric game than a driving one, one way less lonely and more game-y than i hoped. i'm not into crafting survival games at all but the concept really intrigued me, just not enough to not groan at its opening garage tutorial segment or not feel like it was getting tedious after two missions. not bad, if you're into these sorts of games you'll defo find something valuable here, just really let me down personally.

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.

Good game! The constant drive (hehe) to make my car better definitely pushed me through this one. Funnily it took me right to the end of the game to finally upgrade my engine and realise how handicapped I had been for the 19 hours prior. But still I loved the journey of every trip, coming back and adding a new gadget or piece of bodywork to my car which eventually made it into an acceptable vehicle. I will say it definitely felt like it dragged towards the end, the gameplay loop of going on longer and longer routes was getting tiresome and I felt myself just speeding through later routes to get to the objective but overall still a very fun game that I recommend.

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.

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

Pacific Drive: An interesting world and a monotonous gameplay loop makes for wasted potential you can steer clear of.
Pacific Drive's world is a lot like a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-lite. You're basically in The Zone only things don't want to kill you quite as much, though they'll still try. You'll see goofy and inexplicable shit, most of which will start as charmingly quirky but will end as a frequent annoyance on your journey to gather some painfully infrequent resource (I wanna say a big “Fuck you” to ThermoSap Crystals).

I think, like most, I found the art style and world alluring. The game had a good look to it and who doesn't love whacky, radioactive nonsense?
Well, quickly you're introduced to your three radio pals (as you'll never be speaking), and I found all three of them obnoxious. The developers seemed to know players would find their chatter annoying, too, as many conversations are optional, letting the player hold 'Tab' if they want to hear a bit more about the world. Trust me: you don't. Your car kind of talks to you through a screen and tells you it “hearts” you; that's by far the best interacting you'll be doing.
The world isn't very appealing, either. That S.T.A.L.K.E.R. vibe goes away rather quickly when you realize the world is less out to kill you and more so out to pester you. Anomalies are usually right in the middle of the road, so you only have to veer off and possibly let your car hit a thin tree to avoid them. Some, like my least favorite, are near-impossible to see until they're activated. I despised these pileups that spawn electrifying posts all around your car when you get near them, forcing you to take damage until you're out of it. Driving from A to B is like half of this game and I found it to be an unamusing chore.
There's a 'Quirks' system where your car will do things like whenever you reverse, your passenger door opens. You have to assess what causes the issue correctly back at the garage to cure it. I cannot describe how horrible of an idea I think this was and while I want to thank the devs for letting the players turn it off, I want them to explain why they thought that sounded “fun” to begin with.

The story isn't great, but I didn't finish it, so I cannot speak to its end. I'd be fucking mystified if it managed to redeem itself (I Googled it: it doesn't). My biggest issue was since I got stuck in the mid-Zone looking for ThermoSap Crystals, the story took a huge stall. If I couldn't find any of those Crystals in the mid-Zone, it was a wasted run and wasted time. It really pissed me off.
Now I could have been farming them from occasional rust buckets on the side of the road, getting like three at a time when I needed dozens, but I didn't know that until I was many hours in. That s'pisses me off, too.

I do not recommend this bore of a game. Pacific Drive really tested my patience and I guess it won: congratulations.

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.

played for around 8 hours and I still do not have a clue how this game expects to be played. collecting resources is mind numbing and boring, I don’t feel like there’s any real stakes, all upgrades seem to just lessen the effect of frustrating mechanics instead of making the game more fun, and the cool ”being chased by a weird laws-of-physics-defying storm and driving into a pillar of fire” thing has not really materialized at all as it’s been really easy so far.

massively disappointed, but the vibes are really cool :)

Unsure if Shelved or Abandoned. Probably Abandoned but you gotta believe in yourself. I think this is a game I would have really enjoyed a few years ago, but I think I've grown tired of anything survival-crafting adjacent.

The world building is neat and I liked the cast of characters. I enjoyed taking care of the car, but found harvesting materials to be a bit too tedious given the durability of the tools. Gathering resources so you can build tools to gather resources is just not very compelling to me nowadays.

Good for fans of survival crafting, road trips, and mysterious alternate realities.