Game Review: Pacific Drive – A Roadtrip through the Apocalypse
Pacific Drive is the debut game from Ironwood Studios, a driving survival experience where we make our base in the safety of an abandoned garage and from there take our trusty station wagon on a series of dangerous excursions into the depths of the mysterious Olympic Exclusion Zone, an abandoned section of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington USA.
The action takes place in 1998, but there has been no official activity in the Zone for some years and although many rumors and stories have spread to the general public, what exactly happened in the Olympic Exclusion Zone has never been publicly revealed.
For those of you who are not familiar with this title, Pacific Drive is a first-person driving survival game where our car is our only companion. Throughout our adventure, we will navigate a surreal reimagining of the Pacific Northwest and face supernatural dangers. Once we discover the above mentioned abandoned garage, we make it our home base and from there we will restore and upgrade the car between the many expeditions. Each trip into the desolate wilderness offers surprising challenges as we drive our trusty car, gather scarce resources and investigate what’s been left behind in the Zone while at the same time trying to unravel a long-forgotten mystery.
This is a big game full of systems that interact with each other, so there are a lot of different mechanics that need to be managed properly in order to function as intended. The car needs to be fueled, tires or entire wheels need to be replaced, doors and other elements need to be repaired and so on and so forth. As I said, a lot of survival mechanics and the main character in this adventure is the car, not the player.
Pacific Drive is at its best when we are on the road, listening to the excellent music on the radio and with the unpredictable weather for moody company. There are some moments that will make you feel that you are the only person left alive on this earth and right then the level of immersion is complete. The haptics on the DualSense are great, you will feel gear changes and bumps from the road in the controller.
As expected, the game is not accessible for totally blind players like myself, but there are a few accessibility features and gameplay modifiers that should help most players in their road trip. There are many options for Motion Sensitivity, as this is a driving game and some players could become nauseous. These include tumble hiding, camera bob, in/out of car transition, driver’s camera recentering, in-car assistive camera, and more. There are also many options for Visuals, including: Color modes, brighter nights, rain and fog intensity, loot and container highlighting, object outline brightness, and more.
Additionally, there are many gameplay difficulty settings that allow us to configure elements of the gameplay experience which come in the form of modifiers like infinite fuel, infinite lights, the ability to pause the game while in menus, decreased damage for car and player, better resources and many other such helpful options. Of course, enabling these features will disable trophies, but that’s OK and quite normal. Closed captions for dialogue are also provided for those with a hearing disability.
I want to congratulate Ironwood Studios for including these features and I’ll be reaching out to them to suggest a few solutions that could allow even more impaired and disabled players to enjoy this game.
In conclusion, Pacific Drive takes a lot of mechanics from the survival genre, turns them on their head and throws a car into the mix. With a mysterious story enhanced by the immersive atmosphere and by the relentless need for exploration, this feels like a new, fresh and original idea. If you are a car enthusiast who loves tinkering with engines, body work, scavenging for resources and driving in a post apocalyptic world, you will definitely love this uniquely refreshing experience!
Pacific Drive launches on February 22 for PlayStation and PC via Steam.
Review copy provided by Ironwood Studios!
Victor Dima
