TLDR: Great game, a few flaws, you should definitely play it, this review is just therapy.
Store Page: Pacific Drive on
Steam
Pacific Drive is one of those games that are completely and utterly imperfect, flawed little gremlins of a game that you can't help but recommend to everyone, even the people you know wouldn't like it to begin with. Like your worst child. Trust me you're going to love them once you spend a little time with them, even as they are chewing on the furniture in the background.
It's too long, the loop is too brief, the randomly generated levels are too similar, the creative side of the survival genre (building, customizing, etc) is non-existent, its a linear game with an illusion of openess. Yet, I think about Pacific Drive every day, and have to stop myself from launching it again by reminding my own damn mind that there really isn't anything left to do, and there hasn't been since about the 10th hour of gameplay.
So the question is, then, what parts make Pacific Drive so alluring,
even through the fog of development errs? First of all, since it is a
survival crafter at heart, the ease in which that genre can become
compelling does a lot of work. The first session or two are completely
compelling because of this alone. Survival crafter is a maliable clay
that can sort of fit around any scaffolding you throw at it.
But, perhaps more importantly, Pacific Drive presents a distinct tone. It is equal parts 80's roadtrip nostalgia and weighty eldrich dreariness. I was close to my twentieth hour in the game, I had seen every enemy the game had to offer me, I knew what every hazzard did, I knew how to avoid them, and I had equipped my station wagon with deterents just in case I couldn't. I've only ever had to start a level over with (essentially the death state of the game) once and that's because of user error. So why, now in my 25th hour of play, do I still feel that rare sense of dread? That exillerating fear found in the final circle of a battle royal, found in the darkest corridors of survival horror, found in the last 10% of a raid boss. Perhaps its only a diet version of that, but the game manages to maintain that feeling with art direction, atmosphere, setting, and in the way it makes you feel like you're barely in control while allowing you to have full control.
Pacific Drive also does a very difficult thing that very few games can accomplish. It creates a feeling of kinship with what is functionally an inanimate object. Your Station Wagon, even as it slips and slide, controls like a boat, it very quickly becomes your best friend and home. You look for it in the dark, you take care of it when it is ailed, it almost feels like a personal attack anytime its hurt and you know its your fault. Your Station Wagon is, in short, your little buddy. And I just think that's neat.
Perhaps the game's biggest accomplishment, however, is how tactile they've managed to make the car feel. There are hotkeys, of course. You can hit a button to turn on your windshield wipers, to turn on and off your lights. But I would recommend ignoring them. To turn on your car you look at the key and you hold down until the old engine comes to life. You look at the shifter and press down to move it from Park to Drive and back again. You look at the windshield wiper to turn them on and off, the lights, etc. The dome light, the radio, even the navigation computer in your passenger seat it all feels very "there". Something you have to touch, something you have to handle. They've managed to make the entire ordeal feel very alive.
Sometimes we humans forget that while we're driving we're essentially handling a steampunk machine with 8 different levers and buttons required to not crash into a wall and explode. The game manages to give that feeling, and after the first few hours it becomes just as second nature, but also just as satisfying. There is something arcane about pulling up some place dangerous, slamming your car into park so it doesn't roll away, turning off your engine so you don't waste gas, but then deciding to leave your lights on for a little extra light shining on the building you're going to loot, even though you know its going to drain the battery, so you rush in, do it as fast as you can and jump back in the old beater. There is a little magic here.
But then there are the flaws...
There are two major ones. Firstly, the story is delivered via audio - you will have one-way conversations with 1 of 3 characters over your car's radio. They will deliver you exposition, give you your tasks, and deliver Whedon-esque banter for you to enjoy. It's decently written, and while the story itself doesn't even come close to the genres best (e.g. Subnautica) it is passable. The issue comes with the tone. It is completely dichotimous to the rest of the game's atmosphere. It's jovial and charactirure-ish, where the game is offering you a wet blanket of misery and unease, these chuckleheads are offering you zany and it doesn't work. You get used to it by the end, it sort of blends itself in, but I personally think the direction was a mistep that undermines the rest of the game's atmospheric strengths.
The second flaw, and the most important flaw, is that it is far too long. My biggest tip when playing Pacific Drive is to just go straight towards the next story objective. You'll be tempted by the survival crafting genre to go and do a few side missions to build up your car, or unlock a few technologies on the tech tree. Don't. Do the bare minimum of side content. The game, with its current content loop, should have been 10 hours long. You won't do anything differently in the 20th hour than in the 1st hour. The stuff you are gathering barely changes, and while it is cool to put a new type of wheel on your car, or upgrade your body panels from slapdash sheet metal to off-the-lott steel to military-grade armored, none of it is enough to distract from the fact that you had to do the same 10 minute loop to get there.
There's no real exploratory moments, there's none of the creativity that you find in most survival games (via base building). You can only really upgrade your car in one way. And the garage you call home is a glorified POI with specific "sockets" for set crafting benches and utilities. The survival crafting genre NEEDS the player expression and the exploration to really have legs, and Pacific Drive doesn't offer any of that past the facade. The problem is I don't think there is a fix to this that the developers could have deployed, they put themselves into their own trap.
Ultimately, the vibes, the interesting niche with the roadtrip mechanics, it's all enough to justify picking up Pacific Drive. I just feel, at the end of the day, that this is a game that was destined for the pantheon of greats in the genre. It had a spot reserved for the Mount Rushmore of survival-crafters alongside Subnautica, Valheim, etc. So the 4 star rating just sort of feels painful to me that I had to stop so short of that mark. Where most 4 stars are just great games I loved, but didn't find to be masterpieces, the fifth star for Pacific Drive, like the beam of light that will teleport me home, feels so far away.
