Survival games are in fashion. I’m not just saying this because of the massive success of Palworldbut because of the popularity that titles like Ark: Survival Evolved, Rust, Valheim, Sons of the Forest and others of the same kind have maintained for many years. There are many variations to this formula, but I haven’t seen any like it. Pacific Drive and in this review I will explain why this game fascinated me and destroyed me at the same time.
We are in the “Olympic Exclusion Zone”. Decades ago, the United States government settled hundreds of scientists in the forests of the northwest to develop the technology of the future, but something went wrong. For reasons never known to the public, the area was closed and eventually abandoned. What happened there? We are going to find out whether we want to or not, because we are stranded in this place and we have to survive at all costs.
What makes it different Pacific Drive from any other survival game is that The focus is not on ensuring the well-being of the protagonist and his base, but almost exclusively on his self.. Ch anging tires, checking the gas level, repairing the lights and keeping the chassis in good condition are common tasks in this title.
The area is practically abandoned, so we are not going to find a workshop that sells us improvements and spare parts for the car. We have to do them ourselves. We are going to go through the scenarios gathering scrap metal, plastic, rubber, electronic components and everything we need to forge from a tire to an electromagnetic pulse generator. As usually happens, We start with a jalopy that is falling apart, but as we approach the end of the game we have the potential to turn it into a fast all-terrain ship that is proof of all kinds of dangers.. We can also find paints, decals and other cosmetics to give it some personality.
What we don’t have are weapons. The enemies we face are not the type that can be shot at. Some of the anomalies that serve as obstacles on the routes are floating rocks, electric fields or sudden explosions of radioactivity. Others are a little more tangible, like strange metal formations that try to “hijack” the car. The solution is usually to stay away from them rather than confront them. There are tools that allow you to distract or even cancel them, but not necessarily confront them.
Deadly race
This is not an action game, but it can have some pretty tense moments. The car control is quite realistic and it is easy to lose control if we go off the road and are not equipped for them (a little tip: get off-road tires as soon as possible). The damage to the car due to crashes and bad driving accumulates and if we are not careful, we will be stranded and lose all the progress we have made in the mission, as well as all the resources we have accumulated..
I lost several hours of play due to carelessness, poor planning or simple bad luck. Pacific Drive can be terribly frustrating. Survival game veterans should know well what it feels like to lose resources they worked hours for, but That’s what makes this genre so fascinating and the victories sweeter. One of my best experiences was running at the maximum speed allowed by my beat-up car while heading to the portal that was going to take me safely to the base. The relief I felt at making it to the other side alive made the suffering worth it.
But there have been more situations in which satisfaction evades me and fury has tempted me to throw the controller against the screen. This game heavily punishes mistakes and the escapes to the portal with which we finish the missions are especially cruel. More than once I considered abandoning this game so as not to have to repeat long drives with a ruined car, trying to recover what I lost.
As you can see, This is a game for patient people. We can spend a full hour organizing resources, upgrading and repairing the tank for a mission, spend another hour traversing the roads and watch all our work go to waste when an anomaly suddenly appears.. It is impossible to prepare for all eventualities and it is not uncommon to encounter a no-win situation. Depending on what you expect from the game, this difficulty can be considered a strength or a weakness.
Another element that can be considered good or bad, depending on expectations, is its convoluted menu system. It takes some getting used to them to locate where each option is and what it is for.
There are “improvement trees” and semi-hidden functionalities. We also found options that are only available in the workshop and that cannot be accessed in the middle of a mission. Even so, It’s one of the easiest to understand survival games I’ve ever come across.. It can be a good work to get started in the genre even despite its difficulty. Maybe it’s its focus on the car, which is something most of us are familiar with.
Sci-fi on four wheels
The story and setting of the game are elements that captivated me at the beginning, but they lost strength as the hours passed. The mystery of the exclusion zone is intriguing and initially reminded me of the trilogy Southern Reach by Jeff Vandermeer (on which the excellent Netflix film is based Annihilation), but the plot moves very slowly.
The graphics are nothing special and despite the visual effects anomalies, it is visually generic. That does not mean that we can find some beautiful landscapes and very surreal things on the tours.
I have to make a special mention of its soundtrack with excellent rock and indie folk songs. The problem is that there aren’t as many songs as I would have liked and they tend to repeat themselves a lot. Another aspect to highlight in terms of sound is the excellent work of the English voice actors. The game is not dubbed into Spanish, but all the texts are well translated.
Despite all the complications I found when playing it to write this review, Pacific Drive I love it. I found its resource collection and vehicle improvement mechanics captivating. Despite its difficulty, I think it is one of the most accessible survival games, especially for car lovers. The “friction” it offers can be welcome in a game like this. I would have liked a stronger focus on its story, a more distinctive visual style, and a more balanced difficulty, but it all works well together.
Pacific Drive It is an excellent option for both survival game veterans who are looking for something different and for curious people who want to take their first steps in the genre. It can be a brutal and sometimes frustrating experience in which many hours of gameplay and resources can be lost due to a small mistake or bad luck, but its addictive mechanics and intriguing supernatural world can make us feel fond of that little thing.
Review made with a digital copy of Pacific Drive for PS5 provided by Kepler Interactive. The game is also available for PC (Steam and Epic Games Store).
