Pacific Drive was my most anticipated game going into 2024. An anomaly-filled ”Zone” is a concept that strongly defined my preferences, even just by living in Eastern Europe. It is sort of impossible to escape the influence of Roadside Picnic here—an inspiration to the likes of the Andrei Tarkovsky movie Stalker and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games. A truly fresh, interactive take on the idea was something I did not realize I wanted until I saw this game’s trailer back in 2022. To me, the Zone was always as complete and vivid as a real phenomenon. I forgot that there is still so much that can be done with it.
One core of all things inspired by Roadside Picnic is undoubtedly the battle for survival against the ever-changing unknown. Pacific Drive never really showcased much of it in its trailer, but it is a survival game through and through: inventory management, crafting upgrades, expanding a base, and all that. I think many people, perhaps including myself, did not expect it to rely on these systems as much as it does, but it makes sense. You never just go through the Zone, never thrive in it. You survive.
Yet crafting a game that goes so hard on crafting is not easy. Survival games are very popular overall, but as far as single-player experiences go, few have reached immediate critical acclaim. Obtaining resources needed to create more and more resources for the player to collect is surely no small feat, but new areas can only feel special if they are truly packed with unique and increasingly challenging elements. The longer they go on, the more the magic fades away.
As much as I enjoyed Pacific Drive, which is to say a lot, I must admit that it has unfortunately not broken that mold yet. Its survival elements, coupled with procedurally generated areas that you explore on increasingly longer drives with more chaotic and stress-inducing effects, are both its most surprising strength and most predictable weakness. I did not expect how much I would end up enjoying them, but I fully expected the burn-out I felt by the end.
The biggest upheaval in the genre is, to me, the approach of a movable base—something that Pacific Drive dabbles in but does not commit to fully. The majority of crafting is still done at a garage base that the player returns to after collecting power orbs and driving into a pillar of light (or after dying), but a little bit can be done on the go, with a makeshift crafting bench (which can be upgraded later on) and materials picked up during a run.
This provides a nice risk vs reward system. Do I want to create a repair putty right now to fix up my damaged car using the hard-to-find chemicals I scrounged during this run, or do I want to save them for a bigger upgrade? What kind of danger lurks between here and my exit point, and will my tires not blow up, causing me to slow down and not have enough fuel to get out?
Of course, the biggest question always ends up being: how will the anomalies behave? Pacific Drive starts with undoubtedly the most memorable ones that can be found in the very first, tutorial mission of sorts. There are the abductors and the tourists. The former are these big, floating chunks of metal, driving under which causes them to grab and yank the car into nearby obstacles at top speed. The latter are these explosive mannequins in all sorts of human-mimicking positions, pointing towards things, dropping items to lure the player in, drawing their attention away, and teleporting near them only to explode on contact.
Some future anomalies work on similar principles, while some are brand-new issues the player will have to adapt to. Frankly, they are all brilliant, and the chaos that can come from the many different combinations and unexpected situations is exactly what random generation should be all about. What it should never be about, yet unfortunately tends to be, is stretching out the story by forcing the player to just go out on a task with a low chance of such chaos happening. That is what some of the resource-gathering-oriented drives end up feeling like.
My preferred style of difficulty is leaving things up to the player. I enjoy challenge runs and often refuse to use certain mechanics if they make the game easier in a way I do not like. Pacific Drive is in this weird area where, due to its randomly generated routes and special effects, at times engaging with the chaos is too heavily discouraged. Certain resources are so hard to come by that damaging pieces of equipment built out of them is too big of a setback, and even unlocking shortcuts does not help with late-game resource drought.
This is why after 25 hours of playtime, I found little motivation to go back into the zone. Pacific Drive ultimately hits a wall where it becomes not just hard to find resources, but hard to find motivation to jump back in. Its story and resource-gathering elements appear to push for the player to keep going even after the credits roll, but the upgrades do not feel substantial enough to the gameplay experience, and the silly, surprising moments ultimately do not balance out the long resource-gathering segments.
But the actual 25 hours of playtime it took me to get there? Spectacular stuff. The well-acted cast of three characters that chat over the radio carries a relatively safer story, but one filled with tense, atmospheric moments, no matter if hand-crafted or randomly generated. I have so many stories of the Tourists, of a ball of jelly that ripped my car apart, or of finding fuel while radiation ate away at my body and escaping the Zone with only a sliver of health left.
It would be difficult to contain the sheer depth of the Pacific Drive experience when it works. All of the moving parts in its contained maps can create the very best kind of video game stories, where the player’s agency and the game’s systems dance together for extended periods. For a debut game, it is impressive how many ideas here work flawlessly, from simple mind tricks to complex mechanics and terrain generation.
All are enhanced by the disturbing sound effects coming from the woods, or the loud alarm siren signaling the incoming radiation when the player is in the middle of looting an abandoned trailer park. In both situations I would, of course, panic, and run into something that scared the pants off me and damaged my trusty vehicle companion. I can forgive the few times it decided to not cooperate with me by acquiring permanent quirks or just driving straight into me. I deserved it.
We always reconciled while driving through the highways, with rain pouring and the radio blasting some of the most moody tracks in gaming history. Radios are a subject people always remember about a game, yet they never get enough recognition. Pacific Drive is a contender for the best. Be that tinkering away in your little garage or cruising directly into a deathly jump, a raspy-voiced country track switching right into some bubbly pop, it fits just right.
How could it not when the game has such wonderfully unrealistic lighting, with a wide array of strong colors for different biomes and different times of day? It strikes a great balance between realistic models and a gamey art style. No matter when or where you are driving, pop on the radio and, as long as nothing destructive pops up, it will always transport you into a magical place.
Pacific Drive desperately needs a cinematic camera mode at some point. Driving through the pitch black with just your headlights to light the way forward, with an occasional glimpse of an abductor’s blue light, or drifting through a cliffside during the day with yellows and oranges overwhelming the sky as if they existed as tangible clouds right in front of you at all times—I would love to see these and more from a different angle, similar to the ones seen in the trailers.
Yet, eventually, the magic fades sooner than I would have liked. The reality that I am missing 10 crystals to craft new doors, and that I cannot find them while hearing the same track for the 20th time gnaws away at this wonderful picture of Pacific Drive that I want to have. As I set out for another half-hour-long trip I realized that everything might begin to feel even more mundane. My battery charge increases, my fuel amount grows, and I begin to fear the unknown less. The characters wish for me to continue, but I do not.
In the current market of video games, I can only pray that Ironwood Studios will be able to continue improving Pacific Drive. Perhaps create a sequel of some sort. There are still many quirks to iron out, but what the game lacks in polish (including a few visual bugs) it makes up for with how incredibly special it is at its very best.
Pacific Drive will end up as an absolute highlight of 2024 for anyone seeking a fresh experience. Unfortunately, I will likely see many people counter my claims of ”it has a goo volcano that shoots animal-shaped goo traps” with reasons such as ”the upgrade tree is unbalanced” and they will be valid in their denial. I hope that the developers can one day craft a title this special, but also one that is truly undeniable.
Mateusz played Pacific Drive on PC with a review code.
