Pacific Drive Review – A Surprisingly Unconventional Survival Horror

Every now and then a game comes along that is so original that it is almost impossible to explain it to someone else without playing it yourself. The last time I encountered this phenomenon to such a degree was three years ago, with the excellent indie game Inscryption. Indeed, Pacific Drive has a lot in common with it, being an inconspicuous-looking indie game that stands out with its creepy atmosphere and somewhat unusual gameplay, full of unique mechanics and ideas. Although there are other parallels, such as with Subnautica, Stalker, Inside or Control, the best thing about Pacific Drive is its originality and unpredictability.

• Platform: PC (review), PS5
• Publication date: 22.02.2024
• Manufacturer: Ironwood Studios (USA)
• Genre: Survival Horror
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: No
• Data for download: 18 GB
• Play time: 20+ hours
• Price: CZK 765 (Steam), physical Deluxe edition will be available on April 9, 2024.

Infected area deep in the forest

As an unnamed “driver” you set off into the wilderness of Canada (Pacific Northwest) in 1998 to explore a closed area after a horrific industrial accident, strongly reminiscent of the Chernobyl accident. The entire area is contaminated with radioactivity, surrounded by a concrete wall tens of meters high and closed from both sides. But as soon as you approach, one of the local paranormal anomalies will teleport you to the other side of the wall and thus begin both your frantic struggle for survival in the contaminated area, and its gradual exploration and your path to the very source. all the destruction and answers to the questions of what exactly happened here many years ago and caused the creation of the entire zone, its unique anomalies and terrifying inhabitants.

Given the size of the entire Zone, and the speed at which the local radioactive, acidic or toxic storms move through it, your only hope for movement and survival in the Zone is a reliable vehicle. Fortunately, you will find one early on and gradually begin to repair, upgrade and service it at the local garage/base. But as one of the scientists who voluntarily remained in the Zone after its closure will explain to you, your car is not what it seems at first glance. It is not just a car or a vehicle, but one of the local anomalies, the so-called Remnant. This type of anomaly takes the form of various essential items, but always with fatal consequences for their users. Your use of this vehicle will have dangerous consequences for you.

Your car is not just a car or a vehicle, but one of the local anomalies.

While I didn’t notice much at the start of the game, I was increasingly surprised by how far the story went with each passing hour. There’s a ton of voiced dialogue for your radio conversations with the science team, as well as about 600 (!) text entries that you can gradually find throughout the zone that add to its story (private letters, journalistic reports, notes from experiments, etc.). The key missions are also very story-driven, and mostly involve getting past the next wall/barrier in the zone to enter another of the six different biomes. While the game, as a representative of the classic survival genre (scavenge, build, survive), also contains a fair amount of generic content, its story is much denser and more interesting than you might expect.

Experience of revealing a secret

This game will probably surprise you in a pleasant way in terms of gameplay as well. Although one of the important sources of its originality is the fact that you play most of the game behind the wheel of a car, its “pedestrian” parts are also very rich and, for example, the game environment or enemies are much more varied. than what the creators showed us in the trailers. You can leave the car at literally any time, so, for example, during severe acid storms, I parked the car in one of the tunnels and explored this area on foot for an hour before finally returning to the car and driving back to the base. Which, by the way, is not so easy, because for each return to the base you will have to collect dangerous and mostly guarded energy sources in a given location and then drive away in a certain way, similar to the car in “Back to Base”. Future films.

However, the main source of the excellent gaming experience is the overall atmosphere of the game. It is difficult to describe how wonderfully melancholy the minutes are when you are driving on yet another trip to the Zone, sleet, drizzle, pounding the hood and running down the windshield, and the radio is playing one of the absolutely excellent selection of licensed songs (as for the soundtrack, the songs in their style reminded me very much of the soundtracks of both Alan Wake games). Another source of atmosphere is the fact that each new biome is like a new planet, including completely nondescript enemies that become stranger and stranger, from strange machines to living chemicals. To top it all off, there is an adrenaline rush associated with the fact that your possible death during the quest means the loss of most of the resources you have collected. In addition, the maps are procedurally generated, so you are always waiting for discoveries, surprises and unexpected threats. Given the game’s superbly measured and graduated atmosphere, I’d probably tone down the enemy density a bit in some biomes in favor of a more terrifying tension. You can fight, but only to a limited extent, and of course it will cost you some resources (raw materials, energy, maybe health, etc.). Also, the game’s tutorial is a bit too overwhelming with all the building or upgrading options from the start; it would be clearer to reveal them gradually.

The source of a great gaming experience is the overall atmosphere of the game.

Pacific Drive may be a brutal survival game, but if you don’t mind skipping achievements, you can enable one of dozens of gameplay mods in the game’s settings that will make you virtually immortal and play through the game in a sort of “story mode.” But for me, I recommend against it; it’s such an incredible experience that it’s worth playing by its rules and enjoying the tension of the mechanics in their full form. While managing vehicle repairs and upgrades can be confusing at first, it will become second nature as you progress. I loved the game so much that I spent 70 hours playing through it faithfully and carefully – and even then I didn’t see or discover everything. On the technical side, thanks to DLSS, I was able to play it at 4K/60fps on a 3070 with all the details maxed out (the volumetric fog and its lighting are especially stunning), although there were some dips here and there with extremely large or bright maps. Otherwise, I didn’t encounter any serious technical shortcomings. A nice bonus is also the support for the DualSense controller’s haptic feedback on PC, where it’s exciting and useful, for example, to feel the terrain beneath your car’s wheels and potential problems like a flat tire or an enemy crawling on the hood.