Pacific Drive

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For all the emphasis placed on vehicles in games, it’s kind of a shame we’ve never gotten a series about piloting the most impressive contraption of all: the Segway. Sure, there’s games like Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth that feature Segways, but I’m talking about a game where Segging is what it’s all about. Imagine: different models and manufacturers of Segway! Customizable Seg-wheels! Malls across the nation to Segway around in! It’d be a dream come true for those who think walking is for suckers.

Until that happens, though, we’ll have to rely on games featuring more traditional vehicles like Pacific Drive, which is all about…a car. Cars! Who drives cars in 2024?! Well, given this is a quality driving-horror-survival experience, you just might.

via YouTube

It’s a little hard to imagine why anyone gets into courier work. Delivering stuff never seems to go well. Sometimes you’re sent out to the middle of a desert to deliver a severed head, sometimes you accidentally activate a high-tech sphere and gain superpowers while leveling a city and sometimes you end up sucked into the Olympic Exclusion Zone. This walled-off chunk of Northwest America was the site of mysterious experiments some decades ago, but was abandoned when, unsurprisingly, the experiments led to all kinds of mayhem. In particular, there’s the glowing matter-warping Instability that makes the place so dangerous, but that’s just one hazard of many.

It’s not the kind of place anyone goes into anymore, and it’s certainly not the kind of place you’d expect to be able to get out of. With the help of some buddies on the radio and a station wagon that’s both incredibly clunky and incredibly mysterious, you’ll do your best to escape the Zone or die trying.

Don’t expect this to be your average Sunday drive, however. The Zone is no joke. Each time you enter an area away from the garage, you’re on a race against the clock, with a growing puddle of Instability slowly pushing to turn you and your beloved car into so much goop. Beyond that, there’s also various flavors of supernatural anomaly all over the place, from crash test dummies that chase you down when you aren’t looking to giant rock pillars that spring up from the road right in front of you. It’s entirely possible to go to the great pit stop in the sky if you aren’t careful.

Your car is your defense against Bad Stuff along with your way back to the garage, so you’ll want to keep it in tip-top shape. This means collecting loot while you’re out in order to craft better parts once you return, allowing you to improve your car’s performance and armor it against the nastier inhabitants of the Zone. You’ll also want to craft and carry supplies for spot repairs, both on yourself and your vehicle. You don’t know what a bad day is until you have to try and flee an oncoming wall of Instability on a flat tire, after all. Proper planning prevents poor performance, as they say, so take each trip into the Zone as the life-or-death situation it is.

Indeed, if you really want to get into the weeds, it’s possible to take your car to the next level of high-octane performance. Vehicle skills like a handbrake for sick drifts can be installed and added into the controls of your choosing, for instance. It’s also possible to determine and repair the cause of car quirks by answering a series of survey questions at a diagnostic terminal. If closing your trunk causes your horn to go off, rest assured that’s an actual and repairable problem with the car and not just you slowly going crazy. I mean, you are slowly going crazy, but that’s neither here nor there.

You’d expect a game about driving an old, beat-up station wagon through what’s essentially a series of haunted rest stops to be dark and spooky and…well, it is! Pacific Drive benefits greatly from its atmosphere. Even in its most relaxed moments, the game really nails a feeling of dread, but the odd bit of campy 80s-horror humor here and there helps sprinkle in a little levity. This is a nice-looking game that plays well and sounds fantastic; you may want to take a look at the rock-solid soundtrack sometime as it’s on par with some of the best around.

Pacific Drive is a driving simulator with survival and roguelike elements, which is an overly complex way of saying it’s not going to be for everyone. If the concept gets your attention, though, you’ll probably have a good time with this one as it does pretty much exactly what it promises: it’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with a station wagon and a bit less gunplay. It’s a formula that’s well-served by plenty of atmosphere, an awesome soundtrack and surprisingly involved gameplay. Hop on in, buckle up and take it for a spin.