Pacific Drive Spiel

by Rian

If driving through tense situation is up your alley, Pacific Drive may have been on your radar. Contrary to what many reviews warned, the brutal RNG of rogue-like setting, the touch of survival car maintenance, with the flavor of sci-fi horror, the game slugs through them like a checklist. None of them truly mean anything aside from it exists.

Pacific Drive sits in a weird world, where rogue-like overworld generation isn’t helping the unique atmosphere of driving freely. Instead of generating seamless areas after areas to drive through, the player and the car are thrown into a small area to loot and progress through the next area. Unless you are in the end game enjoying the scenery, players would be hard pressed not to stop the car every few hundred meters to stop and loot.

Driving in Pacific Drive through anomalies and obstacles have the moments of pops. However, the game chooses to compensate the difficulty of driving. Both passive and aggressive hazards can be plowed through with the right upgrades, unless we are talking about giant mound rising from the ground or pillars falling out of the sky —and yes, it can happen. The game tries to create the sense of urgency akin to street racing games yet they were mostly empty threats.

Conclusions: Pacific “Loot and Craft”

Though the game is sitting awkwardly between post-apocalypse street racing and overworld RPG, the core gameplay is grounded on loot and craft. Driving is not the most challenging much less most rewarding. Nevertheless, Pacific Drive did scratch that itch I had for driving a hatchback through abandoned towns and nature, while taking full advantage of DualSense controller on a PS5.