Pacific Drive Review (BomberJack)
Never has a location so unnerved me in a game as Pacific Drive. The Zone is full of personality, chaos, and often fury as you loot it, hoping that the next upgrade will make you feel secure. This place does not want anyone in it, and all that protects you from the zone is a haunted, wood-paneled station wagon.
Pacific Drive can be best described as a single player weird science extraction looter. Think Escape from Tarkov without guns and set in an American exclusion zone as depicted in STALKER or Annihilation. Your station wagon is your armor, your weapons, and your friend. It serves as a repository for all the loot you hope to bring back. And rather than worrying about other players sneaking around and icing you, the Zone itself is your nemesis, generating an endless stream of strange anomalies. Every second you stay in could be the one where an inevitable and lethal radiation storm starts coming your way. Survival in this game is your only metric of success.
There are systems akin to those found in a survival game, but most of these systems are associated with your car, not your character. As noted by Commander Sterling, this externalization of the meters works amazingly. You, the puny human, can sprint indefinitely and while you can take some bumps, they're easily patched up with medicine or food. The car, on the other hand, has specific needs. Rather than getting frustrated with your character's need to chug water constantly, taking care of the car is a more parental exercise. You not only need the car, you will love the car.
The car has health pools for the five doors, five panels, two bumpers, one engine, and whatever weird science gizmos you stick in the backseats or on exterior racks. Parts can also suffer status effects; fuel tanks spring leaks, armor is compromised, tires go bald. Sometimes this is the result of a crash, and sometimes it's wear and tear, but status effects happen with just enough regularity to not be annoying. You also need to monitor your car's gas and battery charge. Again, the externalization of the meters does wonders. You will easily find yourself in the shoes of the driver, looking at the gauges on your dashboard and praying there's some gas left in your emergency can so you make it that last leg of your journey. You'll often limp on popped tires and gas fumes to the column of light that is your one escape from the Zone.
And then you're teleported back at your garage to give the car some TLC, spend all those goodies you swiped, and plan your next route. Upgrading is blast and feels appropriately like a reward as you turn your abandoned gas station into a mad science garage. You do start with a few gadgets, notably a scanner to give you a heads up on conditions in your planned route. That means you can prepare, slapping anti-static parts on for an electrical storm or lead-lined panels for a nuclear wasteland. It's interesting to see just how many different properties the parts can have.
One car part that I wish was not so divergent in quality is your set of tires. Offroad capability is a must given how many times you need to get off the road to avoid trouble. I'm pretty sure the many dirt roads are classified as offroad as well. Get Offroad Tires ASAP and stick with high offroad rating tires, you'll be much happier.
The quirk system is also something that doesn't really add value. Basically, your haunted car will sometimes get confused and link two unrelated functions. These quirks are usually negligible, but sometimes they'll pop your hood during a mad escape and block your view. Not fun, and the diagnosis system that allows you to fix quirks requires you to identify cause and effect from a big list of options. This requires too much precision and limits how many times you can guess at the nature of the quirk. For instance, there are two separate options for "Wipers Toggled" and "Wipers Turned On." Why?
These gripes are dwarfed by my enjoyment of the game however. There is so much I could say about the game's ability to generate tension, its sense of humor, or its music, both on the in-game radio and its ambient soundtrack. I have both soundtracks bookmarked on Spotify.
If any of I've said sounded interesting, you should buy this game. It's a wild ride.