Pacific Drive offers a thrilling and unique experience that seamlessly blends the excitement of a road trip with the terror of the supernatural. The game quickly won me over, just as it’s sure to win over the imagination and thrill of players who give the game a much-deserved try.
Pacific drive is a game of figuring it out and pushing your limits. The game offers so much depth in the design of the zone, the great characters and voice-acting, eeriee feel and crafting and customisation.
Does it have a learning curve? Sure, but you are rewarded with modules to make your car better and conquer challenges. Can't save mid run? No one is forcing you to go out on a massive run, it can be as short or long as you like. I think focusing on minor issues is a poor way to look at the scope of this game.
It created an addictive gameplay loop, rewarding with your time, and creates memorable moments in both it's story, it's gameplay, and learning to love and cherish the crappy wagon turned pseudo companion.
The car is suppose to ****, look at it, but you turn it into the wilderness atv it can become through upgrades. If you give it more than the 1 hour most people seem to be grading it on, it'll give you alot more back.
The premise of Pacific Drive is unique and original in many ways, although in others it can become a bit tedious and tiresome. It is a game in which we must be patient and not go crazy, because it is better to go little by little to avoid falling into despair. Being a first-person survival rogue-lite, it has its own touch and nothing will be the same in each exploration, but for my taste a third-person option would have been good.
Pacific Drive is an extremely atmospheric survival game that draws its appeal from the exuberant inhospitality of the exclusion zone. Loneliness and threatening anomalies turn our old station wagon into our closest ally. If you like roguelikes and crafting, you'll find plenty to do in Pacific Drive
Ironwood Studios' debut game accomplishes to be an immersive survival driving adventure. Its intense treks through mind-bending obstacles are balanced with humor and relaxing moments provided by crafting and upgrading useful tools and car components, along with Pacific Drive's catchy alternative rock soundtrack. It's an incredibly impressive debut game that should put the new studio on the map: "there's no peace of mind or place you'll see, like riding on Pacific Drive."
As I said up top, the whole game is something you’re either going to love or hate. Pacific Drive isn’t going to leave many (or any) people saying, “Enh, it was okay.” You might think it’s a brilliant take on the survival genre, or you might think it’s endless amounts of busy work without enough of a payoff, but either way, it’s guaranteed to get a reaction out of you.
As unpredictable as it is rewarding, Pacific Drive can be brilliant, infuriating, and frustrating in equal measure. There's a great idea here but much of its potential is burned up by a tough mid-game learning curve, and unpredictably cruel dangers.
I flip the last switch and start running to my car. The woman that's been guiding me this whole time says "That did it, but there's a storm coming your way. Drive. Now!" I hop in the car and glance at my passenger seat radar screen and sure enough, a storm has appeared out of nowhere and will be on me in seconds. I frantically try to find a route to the exit but the windy roads leading down this mountain would have me zig-zagging right into the ever growing storm. Well . . I guess there's more than one way to drive off a mountain.
I start the engine, shift into drive, and quickly turn the car around, away from the road I came in on. I'm looking at the lip of a cliff that I'm 65% sure isn't just a shear drop off. No time to worry 'bout that now. I floor it straight towards the edge . . I can't see anything but sky for a split second but then, yes, I can do this! My front end comes down hard, its muddy as hell, cluttered with rock, and steeper than I'd like but I can do this. I slide sideways into a boulder that nearly flips my car but she holds, and I hit the e-brake to correct my descent. I chance a look at my map again to see if I'll be able to hit any main roads that'll lead me the **** out of here, not so lucky, but there is a dirt road that just might work. Definitely better than sliding down a mountain.
I desperately try to aim the car in that direction until finally I hit the road hard, fish tail and slide into the direction of my portal, and immediately I see a white shimmer intersecting the road. ****, my cars already trashed, now this anomaly is going to send me flying. I just hope I don't flip. I cross the light and lift up into the sky, I don't flip but I land awkwardly on a barrel and one of my tires comes loose and the door I didn't have time to shut gets ripped clean off, and I was already missing my driver side door. I'm in the storm now, but the worst of it still hasn't caught me. I come up over a hill and then I see it. The massive yellow tunnel of light blots out 30% of the sky. There's my exit. Can't **** miss it. I ignore the map, the woman, the loud alarms, the whooshing of the storm through the missing doors, and I just drive like I've never driven before, straight towards the light. Because if I don't get to that light, this run, which is closing in on 3 hours of actual real-world time, will be all for nothing.
The rest of the storm slowly catches up to me and **** gets louder and then the chaotic energy of the exit corridor is breaking apart rock and earth while its lifted into the air. More anomalies I'm unfamiliar with pop up left and right. Then another **** white shimmer. About 50 yards before the exit. ****, I don't know if I'll survive another ride. But I don't stop, I can only hope the thing propels me forward quick enough so that I hit the inner portal before hitting the ground. I go flying up high but I hit it wrong so the whole car sways to the left but I've got the momentum, I can feel it. And with a smile on my lips, and unblinking eyes, I enter the light, then I hit the portal and then BAM I'm back at the shop. The car is in shambles, I'm out of gas, and the battery just barely made it. My health is dangerously low as well. And in real life, I'm literally shaking, my heart is racing fast, and I can't remember how long I'd been holding my breath. Then the old woman speaks "Oh, looks like you learned a thing or two, newbie." she taunts. Then she says, I'll need way more armor for what comes next. ****.
This game, man. This game is not for everyone. But, goddamn it, its for me. It takes time to really wrap your head around how you'll be playing this game. But once it clicks, oh man, it **** clicks.
I feel like I've been playing this game my entire life. I'm 43 years old, and this, in my head, seems like a forgotten masterpiece of gaming that I'm returning to. Even though the genre is unclear. The story is unfamiliar. The game mechanics are bizarre, and you don't actually play a character as far as I can tell, you're just an empty space that makes the car drive.
I've pretty much avoided survival games throughout its rise. They kept getting bigger and adding more stuff you can build and customize and it was just always way too much for me. It overwhelmed me and the lack of purpose in a game where you can do anything was ever present. 2024 has seen a shift in the survival formula.
Pacific Drive shows that you can use similar mechanics from survival games and apply them to a very story centered, somewhat rogue-like, loop dive. Enshrouded, Palworld, and Nightingale all bring something to the table to 'evolve' (pun intended) the survival genre, but those games are early access and is very evident when compared to 10 seconds in Pacific Drive. That's what I want to end with. This game looks and feels incredible. The weather, my god, man. And the cinematography of every frame feels like an IMAX movie
(MY SCORE : 7.8 /10) Unique and challenging First Person Driving Survival Game! In this game we become someone called Driver, who is trapped in the Pacific Northwest Area and trying to find a way out! By driving a Wagon that we can upgrade and modify in the Garage to face extreme weather, steep terrain and threatening Monsters and Metal Anomalies! There are a Total of 27 Missions to complete the Main Story in this game!
a very interesting experience and a pleasant time spent, and only the excessive protractedness and stuffiness at the end when searching for resources worsened my opinion a little and I didn’t want to delve into it anymore, but for those who, on the contrary, like it, I highly recommend it
I was really looking forward to this game, but the busy-work and menus and crazy amount of survival-crafting all feel like a lot of work. I just wanted some fun weird driving, not to have to take a degree in the various menu systems :')
I was looking for this game, even tried the demo, but everything stayed the same. The controls are clunky and overcomplicated, you do not drive a car with a controller like this. There is no option to disable the rumble?! The controller constantly rumbles when you drive. Who had this stupid idea??? The game is overcomplicated for what it is. I have a 4070 and at first the game set itself to 1280x720 resolution. Later I realised why... When I cranked everything up, and the resolution to 1920x1080 I got 30 fps on a 144Hz monitor, that is unacceptable. Oh, did I mention there is no save during a "run"?! After like 30 minutes I refunded.
SummaryPacific Drive is a first-person driving survival game set in the pacific northwest region of the United States. With your car as your only companion, you'll travel deep into the Olympic Exclusion Zone - a surreal and mysterious place that's been abandoned for decades.