Check out our review of Pacific Drive, one of the most innovative, exciting games of the year…
We take a look at what it’s all about, from the gameplay to story and how it helps to conjure one of the spookiest gaming experience we’ve experienced in a good long while.
Transcript
In a time where it feels like originality is harder and harder to come by, it makes the avant garde, the weird and the overall ‘different’ all the more enticing, and that’s why I’ve been excited for Pacific Drive since it came across my dashboard. I have no idea how many car puns I’m going to get away with, so buckle up.
In this world, arcane and bizarre government experiments have resulted in the American Pacific Northwest being quarantined as the Olympic Exclusion Zone – a place where nothing is what it seems and most of it wants you dead.
And wouldn’t luck have it, you’ve been sucked into the zone with little context, few resources, and very little time to get your bearings and try to survive. So you find a beat up car, and your journey to salvation, understanding the nature of the Zone and keeping the bastard auto running begins.
But with an intriguing premise and the promise of ambitious, unique gameplay, will it live up to these lofty ambitions? Watch on to find out…
So how would you describe the gameplay? In a word, it’s a Roguelike, but in truth it’s so much more. You take your car out on missions deeper and deeper into the open world of The Zone, collecting supplies to improve your wheels, unveiling the secrets of this dangerous land and avoiding succumbing to its numerous threats.
You end each mission loop by collecting energy from the anchors stabilising the area, which allows you to create an exit portal to the safety of your garage. But by destabilising these anchor points, you cause the order of everything around you to break down, creating a knuckle-whitening race to safety.
Then once you’ve made it to the garage, you’ll be able to put all the loot you’ve gathered to use, upgrading and repairing your car before your next loop begins. And boy will you need to keep it repaired, as it’ll take a pounding even if you’re a careful driver. I’ll talk more about it in a bit, but the realism of the car’s handling, degradation and response to external factors is really impressive, and becomes an integral part of Pacific Drive’s challenge, and charm.
And trust me, this game is a challenge, at least for a scrub like me. If you don’t make it out ‘alive’, you’ll be returned to the garage with a battered, almost undriveable car, and will lose any resources that you gathered on your latest loop. It’s a good incentive to ‘git gud’. There’s always that temptation to risk going a little bit further before retreating to safety, and this risk vs reward choice keeps things intoxicatingly addictive.
So that’s a basic rundown of the core gameplay, and before I go on, it’s worth saying that it’s bloody brilliant. It’s that perfect balance of progress and challenge that scratches that dopamine itch, and makes for one replayable experience. While the first hour or so can be a bit of mindfuck, you’ll find your feet (or tyres) soon enough, and there’s a real sense of satisfaction when you look back at how far you’ve come.
The only thing that really takes some getting used to is the UI and the seemingly endless cascading menus. There’s so much depth to this game, and like I said, the realism offers enough to sink your teeth into before you even factor in the supernatural elements. Not only do you need to physically put things in the trunk of your car, manually start the engine or engage and disengage the handbrake, but you’ll also need to keep a very close inventory of everything you have and need in order to not get stranded. But all this stodginess feels by design, and augments the atmosphere of the game.
And this atmosphere is creepy as flip. The fear of the unknown and the hidden threats of The Zone looms large over every moment. Every glint of something unusual or eerie sound got my pulse racing, particularly with the danger of your car breaking down at any moment.
It really becomes your island of security, and it’s utterly terrifying all the time you have to be out of it. And this is where those seemingly clumsy menus and mechanics play their part. It’s the closest a game’s come to recreating that feeling of fumbling with a set of keys, trying to unlock a door while being chased by a deranged serial killer. It’s utterly, palm-sweating-ly terrifying without overreliance on jumpscares or cheap shocks.
And this is all without looking too deep into the threats of The Zone. From rock formations coming out of the ground to strange mannequins scattered over the road, this is just scratching the surface of the things that want to wreck your ride. Throw in changing storm systems that mean you have to adjust your paths on the fly, and much like the tension, the challenge never lets up. I don’t own an Apple Watch but I’m pretty sure a heart rate warning would’ve flashed up while I was playing.
I won’t go too much into the plot, but I loved the way it revealed itself through the gameplay. While it’s ostensibly designed to be a very lonely game, a combination of great voice acting from remote characters, as well as a bevy of awesome licensed tracks on your car radio stop the isolation from becoming too much. While it’s a horror through and through, it doesn’t feel cynical or mean spirited, and these moments of levity really help.
So Pacific Drive definitely has its influences. There’s its roguelike forebears, as well as sims like My Summer Car (which if you haven’t watched Funhaus’ gameplay series, you’re really missing out). And from the world of cinema, it’s hard to look further than standouts like Annihilation and The Color Out Of Space. But while it owes a lot to what’s come before, the strength of Pacific Drive is how it takes these inspirations and makes something that feels fresh, new and vital. Perhaps it’s overexcitement or recency bias, but this truly feels like one of the best games I’ve played in a good long while, and one that I think is destined for cult status. February might be too early to talk game of the year awards, but I’d be very surprised if Pacific Drive isn’t in the running.
But what did you think of Pacific Drive? Let me know in the comments below, I’d love to read your thoughts. And while you’re down there, don’t forget to subscribe; we’ve got plenty of exciting stuff coming this year, and we’d love to have you along for the ride. In the meantime, you can always visit upsidedownshark.com to keep up with everything we’ve got going on, check out our movie and music YouTube channels and until next time my name is Tom, this has been UDS and we’ll see you next time.
While you’re here, please subscribe to Upside Down Shark on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts!
Tom Baker
I like Star Wars, heavy metal and BBQ Pringles.
