You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise based on the game’s marketing and aesthetic tones, but Pacific Drive is not a game involving some kind of evocative and scenic trek across the Pacific Northwest in a dingy, vintage four-door sedan. Rather, it’s a frustratingly obtuse survival extraction game in which you come across a run-down station wagon by way of paranormal phenomena, and then this modest estate car ultimately serves as the core pillar of the game’s fundamental progression loop. That aforementioned frustration is shakeable, however, for those who have the attrition to scavenge through the layers of Pacific Drive’s somewhat unwelcoming and unapologetic systems. At its core, Pacific Drive is a highly engaging and sufficiently rewarding game, which offers a gameplay loop featuring numerous hours of tangible progression, along with a few narrative surprises along the way.
Pacific Drive has a touch of the DNA of walking simulator games like Firewatch, only you’re in a car. Well, you’re not really in a car, not most of the time anyway – that’s one of the many peculiarities of Pacific Drive that drastically subvert expectations. As a matter of fact, Pacific Drive doesn’t involve a tremendous amount of driving; Cruising USA 2024, this is not. Nor is this a narrative-focused game, although there is certainly a narrative to be had here, involving three plucky if not troubled companions who’ll serve as your guides in the exclusion zone(s), endearingly hoping to help you escape with your sanity fully intact. That somewhat intriguing narrative takes more of a backseat though, pun intended. Rather, Pacific Drive is very much a resource scavenging game, resting firmly in the “hit tree, get wood” family of gaming experiences – only in this case it’s more like a second cousin in that family since rather than poking trees you’ll be taking a buzzsaw to rusty, derelict vehicles on the side of the road or in an overgrown clearing. Then you’ll walk over and do the same to another one about 40 feet away, salvaging the parts to take back to your garage base. That is more or less the core loop of the game, planning out which zone you’re going to deploy to from the route planner in your garage, pretty much being dropped directly into that zone by way of non-optional fast travel, and then laboring to scavenge resources to take back with you to your base, which you can use to improve your car and the base itself, then you repeat the cycle. That simple summary somewhat undermines a cool creative choice applied to the process of extracting from the zone and returning to your base, but I won’t spoil that here and thus deprive players of the chance to experience those moments for themselves. All I’ll say is that extracting is by far one of the most exhilarating aspects of the gameplay loop, particularly when the timing has been slightly mismanaged.
Outside of extracting though, the driving aspect of the game lacks a certain level of breadth or polish. It feels altogether ancillary even, which is rather bizarre for a game with progression systems almost entirely focused around improving and upgrading a car. The method by which you deploy to the various zones is very much the Starfield mechanic of choosing a point on the map to go to and instantly warping there. Once you’re out in the zone, you’ll drive to the next structure that can be seen on the map (which can only be seen from inside the car while looking into the passenger seat) put the car in park, turn the car off, get out, and begin to scavenge for resources. Then you’ll subsequently get back into the car, turn it back on, take it out of park, and drive another short distance until you stop the car again, turning it off and putting it into park, to scavenge again. There’s no contiguous, surreal, or poignant driving experience to be had here as you set out toward your destination – you simply drive out of the garage and arrive there in seconds. For those looking to feel the wind in their hair as they traverse the backroads of beautiful, desolate Americana, this game will be ripe with disappointment for them. And I will feel a certain amount of pity or sympathy for the players that bounce off this game with the force of a spring-loaded trampoline like I almost did. Because for all the features and systems in this game that seem to take the concept of quality of life and irreverently chuck it in the bin, Pacific Drive has an undercurrent of whimsical charm and pervasive gratification that delivers an experience not quite like any other game I’ve played before. It’s not Firewatch, it’s not Death Stranding, it’s not WB Games’ Mad Max, it’s not No Man’s Sky, it’s not ARK: Survival Evolved, and yet in some ways, it’s a hint of all of those games, twisted together into a rather abstract, unnecessarily obtuse, but undeniably engrossing game that simply asks the question: Don’t you want to build a better car? Yes, yes I do Pacific Drive, I would like a much better car. Frankly, this one is shit. And so, in reaction to that simple premise, it’s off to the races, proverbially rather than literally (imagine if they let you race in this game). You set about the almost self-imposed task of building the most formidable survival transport vehicle you can manage to find the materials and conduct the research and development for, with an unavoidable sense of satisfaction and glee washing over you as you continue to see your once humble station wagon become something else entirely as a result of your hard – if not a bit monotonous – work.
This is not to say that Pacific Drive is not capable of inducing all manner of frustrations in the player; it very much is. What’s more, this isn’t a game I would describe as “fun” so much as I would describe it as “rewarding” and there is an important distinction there. It never becomes “fun” to continuously reposition and reallocate resources in storage bins akin to a Resident Evil save room. It never becomes fun to have to park, turn the car off, get out, do the thing that you need to do, get back in the car, turn it on again, and put it in drive. It never becomes fun to have to scrounge through dark and often narrowly constructed structures attempting to find lootable crates and backpacks that you can hardly see (unless you turn on the accessibility feature that illuminates them, which I would highly, highly recommend). And it never becomes “fun” to accidentally tear up part of your car when trying to replace a part, or struggle to pick things up because you’re supposed to be holding a button rather than simply pressing it, or attempt to look at the rather small map situated in your passenger seat while also driving your car at the same time since the game features no minimap. The game’s user interface is unabashedly rigid and inconvenient, the gameplay loop is marketably repetitive, and the game itself only rarely lives up to its name with the amount of walking, scavenging, inventory management, and menu delving you’ll be doing to progress through its many obtuse systems and mechanics.
And yet, I kept going out to scavenge the zones and I kept coming back with a haul of resources and goodies. I’d subsequently set about the arduous task of depositing them into storage or, if I was privileged enough, putting them to actual good use. When I could, I would spend resource points on one of the many research and development trees available to progress through, and when applicable, I kitted out my car with some new part or modification, whether it be a reinforced bumper or a fancy new gadget. Soon after, I’d set out on the road again – into the perils of the unknown – to repeat that laborious, painstaking, but satisfactory process. It didn’t become more fun, but it became considerably easier, through some amount of acclimation to the game’s mechanics, sure, but more importantly, as a direct result of the work, development, and investment I had put in during the game’s earlier hours. My car was more dependable and more functional. I could accomplish more and collect more out in the zones. Physically and aesthetically, my car began to evolve well beyond the modest, beat-up station wagon I fatefully came upon during Pacific Drive’s opening minutes. And every time I left the garage, I noticed the gameplay developing and evolving as a result of my efforts.
That is the crux of Pacific Drive. It is about laboring towards something and enjoying the results – feeling the sense of progress, along with the satisfaction and motivation such tangible progress brings with it. There are undoubtedly hours upon hours of gameplay to be had for those possessing unrelenting patience, those true warriors of attrition that would see Pacific Drive’s systems through to their ultimate culmination. I am not one of those brave souls, I am just a reviewer who happened to play and ostensibly finish this game. I may have even hated it at first, but then I came to regard it with respect and admiration for daring to do something different, refusing to compromise on its vision, and demonstratively conveying to me exactly where I can shove my desire for more quality of life features in the process. I’d like to think I can tell when a game has an uncommon or exceptional amount of depth, and that is what I believe is on offer in Pacific Drive. I imagine those who become invested in, or perhaps even obsessed with it, are the only ones who will be able to comprehensively look under the hood at all of its inner workings, discovering and experiencing everything that it has to offer as a resource gathering and utility development sandbox. And that is why, for all its faults, I’ll not deny this game the praise and credit it deserves. It is not a game for the many, it is a game for the few, and there are few games like it. And that is certainly worth a 7 out of 10, in my book anyway.
-Kirk
Pacific Drive is available on February 22nd on PC and PS5. Thank you to Kepler Interactive for providing us with a review code (you’re amazing Jenny).