Pacific Drive is a rare case of a game that wrangles an oversaturated and stale genre by its neck and spin it into something original. It grabs everything about survival games and put it in four wheels.

Instead of the usual hunger, tiredness etc you now have fuel, battery, wear & tear and many other small gameplay mechanics and details that together forms a very cohesive big picture. Tending after your car can be a bonding exercise - and sometimes even relaxing, diligently fixing your car, organizing loot and researching new parts from the comfort of your garage after a panicked close call extraction.

One thing this game got absolutely right is the quirks system. As you progress through the adventure, your car starts to develop "malfunctions" that can range from being harmless, annoying, detrimental and even beneficial. It feels like your car is another main character by itself.

If you're a fan of diegetic sim games such as Jalopy, enjoy works of speculative fiction such as Roadside Picnic/Stalker and isn't bothered by survival mechanics and a little bit of grind, then this game is for you.

The only thing that somehow soured my experience is that it could have used a little bit more variety. Anomalies are awesome, but after a while you start to notice there's only a few types of them. Can't shake the feeling the game could've been more ambitions and creative in this regard. Same for the POIs: at some point I started ignoring them because they offered too little loot for too much effort (and it's always distributed in the same boxes/bags/etc). Lastly, Pacific Drive would have benefited from more unique stuff (such as exotic parts/equipment and decor) to reward exploration other than generic resources and the occasional random decal or paint.

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 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!

Infelizmente Pacific Drive não me agradou o quanto eu esperava, não é um jogo ruim, mas tem muitos elementos que acabaram tirando meu interesse em continuar jogando.
Primeiramente quero destacar os pontos positivos dele, as músicas que tocam na rádio são incríveis, a mecânica de upar o carro e de fazer as manutenções são legais.

O que não me agradou nem um pouco foi a sua história, achei muito fraca e desinteressante, chegou a um momento do jogo que eu simplesmente fazia as missões sem nem saber o porquê direito.
Outra coisa que me pegou um pouco, foi o fato do jogo não ser mundo aberto, não que eu ache jogos de Extraction ruins, mas acho que esse jogo caberia muito mais um mundão aberto.
As anomalias do jogo são muito sem graça, acho que se o game tivesse algumas ameaças reais, seira bem mais legal. Sinto que esse jogo tinha um potencial incrível e foi mal aproveitado, poderiam botar algum tipo de combate simples e um risco maior em cada run misturado com a mecânica do carro, seria bem mais interessante.
Como falei antes, não é um jogo ruim, da para relaxar jogando, mas acho que completar toda a história desse game não rolou para mim

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.

For the first 20 hours of this thing I felt like I was playing an all-time cult classic. Phenomenal weirdo atmosphere, incredible blend of a really satisfying survival loop and beautiful cinematic worldbuilding. Everything about fighting your way out of a storm, repairing the car, and upgrading it piece by piece feels so tangible in the best way. Maybe I loved it too much early on, cause I spent so long in act 1 that I left myself a lot of game to get through by the time things started to feel repetitive and worn out. It just doesn't feel worth taking any time to engage with the mid-zone and deep zone in any way when you've done the same routes 10 times over and the only reward will be incremental upgrades that aren't remotely needed to complete the main story. My lasting memory will definitely be those first 20 hours though. Absolutely nothing else that feels like this

I knew I’d dig Pacific Drive, but I didn’t expect the car maintenance to become my favorite part of it — or for it to keep me invested for nearly thirty hours.

My play style in games like this is to play the janitor: grabbing everything not bolted down and tossing it in my sack. That served me very well for the incredibly robust crafting system, amassing a large tool shed of doo-dads. Unfortunately, I think it also kept me too far ahead of this game’s best moments where everything is going wrong and you have to be like Matt Damon in The Martian to “science the hell” out of the problem, crafting the essentials to keep you going.

It pays to pay more attention to the details than I did: figure out where to find what kinds of resources and just grab what you need to have the best freeform experience. If you’re an anxious little thing like me, you might burn yourself out a bit on stopping for resources too often and losing momentum on some of the more grand objectives. As with any immersive RPG like this, it’s a dance between what you need to do versus trying to do everything. Finding that balance makes for the best trip.

Just like the best immersive sim games, there’s a tradeoff for the endgame that you either end up having the final mission that tests you in every lesson you learned — or lets go of the gas and lets you walk through a shoegazey reflection. This one fixes eyes to shoelaces, where I maybe wanted to really show-off, but it might be best for a game about driving to have at least one joyride.

2 AM - Olympic Exclusion Zone - Outer Zone

I kill the engine, close my eyes and sit back in my car seat. The wind and rain batters the protective outer shell of my car, threatening to lift it off the ground and toss it down a ravine at any moment.

“There’s no such thing as a ‘Cursed Wheel’” I tell myself; and I believe it, I really do. It must have been my judicious use of the handbrake or driving a little too fast over a small pile of stones or a little too close to the Hot Dust 200 yards back. That’s why my front left wheel is loose for the fourth time on this excursion. It’s not Cursed.

I believe this despite being frequently pursued by semi-sentient balls of possessed trash and flying robots that want to steal my car. I believe this despite the existence of the Friendly Dumpster and the enigmatic-but-useful Pacemaker. I believe this despite every single piece of evidence to the contrary. There is no such thing as a Cursed Wheel.

Leaving it is an option. I can drive for miles without tending to it, I might even make it home if the conditions are perfect. Conditions are never perfect. A rogue squall could drift across at any moment and I could be left trying to repair so many more issues under a battering of acid rain or a confusing storm of Bollards and Shakers throwing my car and my self around like toys. Best to deal with it while the weather is only pre-apocalyptic.

I slide out into the maelstrom and tighten the wheel. It’s literally a moment’s work, even with my tools haphazardly thrown into a side-storage container. I even check around the car for any signs of weakness in the vehicles doors and panels, it’s the kind of thing that can save your life in the Olympic Exclusion Zone. All good, I slide back into the driver’s seat, soaked but satisfied. It’s time to head home.

I pick an exit point (why do they have to be so far away?) and all hell breaks loose. The real storm is coming and I am going. Fast. Tearing across the terrain in the near pitch-black at 100, 120, 140 km/h, squinting through the pouring rain. While my back was turned, exploding Tourists have drifted into the road causing me to veer into a ditch and mow down two dozen saplings before colliding with a tree. I check the dashboard console, no serious damage but the hold-up means that the initial storm has overtaken me and the worst is still to come.

Pulling back onto the road and flooring it, I can feel the true nightmare breathing down my neck, my exit point so near and yet not-near-enough. It’s a damn good job I dealt with that wheel.

An alert chimes on my dashboard.

There is No Such Thing as a Cursed Wheel