I’ve been keeping an eye on Ironwood Studios’ upcoming survival adventure game Pacific Drive since I first learned of its existence a year ago. This title is an unusual spin on the roguelite genre, as it tasks you with traveling through increasingly dangerous areas in an effort to escape a supernatural region in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The problem is that this isn’t a third-person shooter like Remnant, or a hack-and-slash game like Hades. The idea of Pacific Drive is to equip, maintain, and upgrade a car that serves as a main ship, exploring deadly and vast areas, uncovering secrets, looting and scavenging along the way. The really unique part is that there isn’t any combat in this game either. From the first minute, you’re at a disadvantage, and stepping on the gas and running away is your best option for survival.
I know this all may seem strange, so let me outline the storyline of Pacific Drive in more detail. Essentially, a disaster occurred in the Pacific Northwest, which resulted in a region of the United States that was extremely dangerous and uninhabitable. To protect the people, the government built a wall around this Olympic Exclusion Zone, as it says, however, despite having a huge concrete structure separating the area from the rest of the world, you still manage to get sucked into the Exclusion Zone , passing through the neighborhood on an inconspicuous journey. Now, using your trusty car you found in a dangerous area, you must delve into the danger to find your way out and return to a normal, safe life.
This is where the roguelite elements and crafting/survival features come into play. You accept the mission and travel to the Exclusion Zone area, where you loot resources, scavenge, and then try to escape with your life. If you manage to do it, you’ll take those goodies back to the Garage Center, where you can craft new car parts, improve existing ones, and build ways to better study and analyze the Exclusion Zone. If you don’t make it out “alive,” you’ll end up back in the garage with a battered, largely unusable car and will lose any resources you collected on your latest voyage.
Pacific Drive doesn’t challenge our expectations of a roguelite space. At its core, it’s all very familiar, but that doesn’t stop the game from being very unique in many ways as well. Again, this isn’t a fighting title in the first place. It’s an exploration game where you have to record and understand the world you find yourself in to have a better chance of surviving in it. This comes in the form of analytical anomalies, including environmental hazards or enemy types who want nothing more than to make your life a nightmare, usually just to frustrate you and damage your car. You then match this up with a crafting and scavenging system where you need to create the right tools to be able to harvest the right materials, which in turn can be used to craft better items and gear. It’s an easy loop to appreciate and understand, even if it seems a bit shaky when it comes to exciting developments.
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The biggest enemy I’ve encountered so far in Pacific Drive is that the game feels a little too stable in terms of progression. Gathering the items and resources needed to make meaningful improvements to your car takes time and considerable effort, which can push the wind in the story’s sails, if you let it. Additionally, the nature of Roguelite can be very frustrating at times. If you bite off more than you can chew on an adventure and fail, the damage done to your car and the toll it takes on the materials you’ve collected and stored can be absolutely devastating. Pacific Drive doesn’t feel as roguelite as Hades or even Returnal, and even though the challenge is steep and you fail a lot, you still make meaningful and fulfilling progress toward the ultimate end goal.
However, I will say that while it does have some demons, the core gameplay of Pacific Drive is very good. This is not a game, the car is just a container that continues normal movement, like Grand Theft Auto, you get into a car and the basic mechanics are no different than walking and running. In this game you have to manually start the engine, engage and release the handbrake (otherwise the car actually will), turn on the windshield wipers and headlights (assuming they aren’t damaged), and even keep an eye on your map, it’s physics , rather than being presented as a minimap on the HUD. Pacific Drive is immersive in a unique way, which keeps the gameplay fresh and illustrates how it stands out in a saturated genre.
Ironwood’s efforts to keep Pacific Drive entertaining also extends to the soundtrack, which uses a variety of licensed songs to keep the adventure fun with upbeat tunes. Coupled with the constant chatter and dialogue from the supporting cast, even though this is physically a very lonely game, you always feel like you’re taking on a huge challenge to escape the Exclusion Zone as part of a team. The graphics are also excellent, and the level design feels detailed and full of opportunity.
I can see Pacific Drive facing the same types of problems that many roguelite and roguelike games face, but assuming you’re up for the challenge, this looks to be a very unique and fun take on the genre. The car mechanic is awesome, the level design is excellent, and the graphics and soundtrack are top-notch. From what I’ve seen in this preview, the progression may feel a bit stale, and the looting and scavenging may also lose its appeal over time, but hopefully the mystery at the heart of the storyline will offset that. Either way, we’ll find out soon, as Pacific Drive launches on PC and PlayStation 5 on February 22, 2024.
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