Pacific Drive Preview: On the Highway to Hell

I've been keeping a weather eye on Ironwood Studios' upcoming survival adventure game, Pacific Drive, ever since I first learnt of its existence a year ago. The title is an unusual spin on the roguelite genre, as it asks you to work through increasingly dangerous zones in the effort of escaping a supernatural region of the American Pacific Northwest. The catch is that this isn't a third-person shooter like Remnant or a hack n' slash like Hades. The idea of Pacific Drive is to outfit, care for, and upgrade a car that can serve as the main vessel as you explore deadly and broad regions, uncovering secrets, looting and scavenging along the way. And the really unique part is that there isn't really any combat in this game either. You're on the backfoot from minute one, and hitting the gas and escaping is your best bet for survival.

I know this all may seem strange, so let me outline the storyline of Pacific Drive in a little further detail. Essentially, a disaster occurred in the Pacific Northwest and this led to a region of the US being highly dangerous and inhabitable. To protect the people, the government built a wall around this Olympic Exclusion Zone, as it's called, and yet despite a massive concrete structure separating the zone from the rest of the world, you still managed to get sucked into the Exclusion Zone when passing nearby during an otherwise inconspicuous journey. Now, using a trusty car that you found in the dangerous zone, you must travel deeper into the hazards in order to find a way out and to return to your regular, safe life.

This is where the roguelite elements and the crafting/survival features come into effect. You accept missions and travel to regions of the Exclusion Zone where you loot resources, scavenge, and then attempt to escape with your life. If you manage to do so, you bring these goodies back to a garage hub where you can craft new car parts, improve existing ones, and build ways to better study and analyse the Exclusion Zone. If you don't make it out 'alive', you'll eventually be returned to the garage with a battered and basically unusable car, and will lose any resources that you gathered on your latest voyage.

Pacific Drive isn't challenging what we've come to expect from the roguelite space. At its core, it's all very familiar, but this doesn't detract from the fact this game is also very unique in a plethora of ways. Again, this isn't a combat title first and foremost. It's an exploration game, where you have to document and learn about the world you find yourself in to have a better chance at surviving within it. This comes in the form of analysing anomalies, including environmental hazards or enemy types that want nothing more than to make your life a nightmare, usually by simply frustrating you and damaging your car. Then, you match this up with crafting and scavenging systems where you need to create the right tool to be able to harvest the correct materials, which in turn can be used to make better items and gear. It's a loop that's easy to appreciate and understand, even if it does seem to falter a tad when it comes to thrilling progression.

The biggest enemy I have encountered so far in Pacific Drive is how the game can feel a little too steady when it comes to progression. It takes time and a fair bit of effort to gather the items and resources you need to make meaningful improvements to your car, and this can take the wind of the story's sails, if you will. Plus, the roguelite nature can be very demoralising at times. If you bite off more than you can chew and fail during an expedition, the damage to your car and the price that it will put on your gathered and stored materials is absolutely devastating. Pacific Drive doesn't feel like a roguelite like Hades or even Returnal, where even though the challenge is steep and you will fail a lot, you still make meaningful and fulfilling progress towards the ultimate end goal.

What I will say however is that while it does have a few demons, Pacific Drive's core gameplay is very well offered. This isn't a game where the car is just a vessel to continue regular movement, something like a Grand Theft Auto where you enter a vehicle and the basic mechanics are no different to walking and running about. In this game, you have to manually start the engine, engage and disengage the handbrake (else the car will actually roll away), turn on windscreen wipers and headlights (assuming they haven't been damaged), and even keep tabs on your map, which is presented physically and not as a minimap on an HUD. Pacific Drive is immersive in a whole manner of unique ways, and this keeps the gameplay fresh and helps it stand out in a saturated genre.

Ironwood's effort to build out Pacific Drive and keep it entertaining also extends to the soundtrack too, which uses a variety of licensed songs that keep expeditions fun with upbeat tunes. Add to this constant dialogue and conversations by the supporting characters, and despite this being physically a very lonely game, you always feel like you're taking on the monumental challenge of escaping the Exclusion Zone as part of a group. The graphics are also excellent and the level design feels detailed and overflowing with opportunities.

I can see Pacific Drive facing the same kinds of issues that many roguelites and roguelikes face, but assuming you are up for that challenge, this is looking to be a very unique and interesting take on the genre. The car mechanic is fantastic, the level design is brilliant, the graphics and soundtrack are top notch. From what I've seen in this preview, the progression can feel a little stale, and as the hours roll by, looting and scavenging might lose their allure too, but hopefully the ramping up mystery at the storyline's core will offset this. Either way, we'll know for certain soon, as Pacific Drive is set to launch on PC and PlayStation 5 on February 22, 2024.