Pacific Drive Review - Buy, Wait, Never Touch?"

let me explain a single moment in Pacific Drive I was tear assing down the side of a road just after plucking a yellow globe of some sort from a weird looking technological alar thrusting into the passenger seat like a neon baby and just like you would expect that radioactive ball gave me the ability to warp back home after a mission accomplished I sat down in the seat used the map and activated the ball and just then pillars of dirt and stone started smashing up out of the ground throwing pavement and debris everywhere then behind me in my rear view mirror I saw a magical storm rolling down the road trying to envelop the car in mystical yellow energy which it did because I was so busy wondering what it was I didn't listen to the radio alert of someone telling me this is exactly what was going to happen and just then something else fried my car's electrical system the doors popped open the radio started playing music the interior dome light flicked on and for some random reason smoke started billing out of the AC vents I gunned the gas and I kept looking around for an exit then I saw a giant blasted looking death laser that I was supposed to drive into so I turned right pounded down the side of a ravine through a valley and punched the car into the portal and boom I was home that was one of the first experiences I had with Pacific drive and it just got more unique from there Pacific Drive is nothing if not a series of unexpected events that somehow despite every bit of chaos you can think of still hold together even if your car is turned into a visual representation of pure destruction doors missing Hood gone and two flat tires how does it do it well sit back and let's talk about a game that's one part Mad Max one part Ghostbusters and at least two parts mystical car mechanic simulator subscribe now for more reviews including Final Fantasy coming up soon Pacific Drive comes out on the 22nd for $26 on PC and 30 for PlayStation from the very beginning Pacific Drive builds almost everything from its atmosphere graphically the game is an oddly enchanting dispersion pattern of a anomaly Enchanted locations around a central series of Roads Loosely called highways and that means that every single drive you leap into the anomaly Zone and it's a surprise while it's low detail in places it's high impact and incredible design everywhere for just one example the ability to not only see what's damaged on the car just by looking around at it but you can also glance into the window to a series of displays inside a graphical readout that makes identifying what needs repaired what tires are punctured in the General State of totally screwed that you are in in the same way a forest has discrete levels from for floor to undergrowth mid-growth to canopy Pacific drive has its atmosphere nailed down in layers performance-wise the game has to deliver a lot and it requires some serious oomph to do so on a 4090 with a current I9 and 64 gigs of RAM to get the game at Ultra and locked without noticeable drops was pretty difficult higher medium settings worked much better however it does have dlss without frame gent so you can leap in and start making those adjustments as you see fit I suggest shadows and postprocessing for the most bang for the buck and to keep the the image quality stable and looking very good without sacrificing some of the features that you need like rear viiew mirrors yes this is other than some major racing games one of the first titles I've seen where mirrors and Reflections can actually affect the gameplay why well because the number of times you can to be racing down a patchwork of pavement barely held together by the clumps of grass that have grown through it while being chased at speed by an Ever encroaching storm of fiery endgame and four creepy Limpet mines that are attracted to the metal of your car it's hard to count and being able to track them regardless if you're driving or not is incredibly important and knowing where those are and where your escape from the map is to offsetting goals that need to be perfectly timed in some instances where you may find yourself deciding that it's either let the storm take you down the lipet mines fry your car or cranking the wheel right and bursting through a patch of forest towards the Escape portal while consistently keeping an eye on what's Chasing You matters a massive number of graphic options are here for you to do that for example view distance Shadows anti-aliasing textures effects post-processing foliage shaders casting Shadows Shadow quality mirrors fog detail resolution and Screen space shadows as well as dlss and just about everything else Under the Sun is there for you to adjust as a package I would say that this game does look phenomenal and it's also because of the design everything has this very cool very specific look that really does exist just in Pacific drive but be aware be a little finicky when it comes to the frame rates when it comes to the information that you get from the graphics that is also met out in the audio department first sound it's uniformly excellent from the crunch of suspension getting mistreated when you lob over some rocks hidden in the grass to Eerie sounds bellowing from the woods like infernal creatures have a hear be Human Siren the warble of Acoustics when anomalies are nearby actually means something the information that you need from those sounds is paramont and while you can identify what kind of anomaly it is even on the other side of a building or skirt just past the vision of two odd flying drones that try to grab your car and Huck it through the level the ability for you to decide what to do via just sound alone is important but it's also in the atmosphere The Heavy Rain Sound that dampens down when you leap into the car is replaced by the tinny sounds of those drops hit in the roof and it reminds you every time of those moments when you were a kid when you sat in the car in the rain excellent sound throughout and as you probably expected this is continued in the music now first this is really two beasts the first are licensed tracks that play if you have the streamer mode off sometimes somewhat recognizable but they always give you the feeling of watching a Supernatural episode when Sam and Dean were getting ready to go out and a montage was playing the other is the more surreal series of drones and tones discordant disturbing and always present no matter how sunny and cheerful a level may be at the time forcibly reminding you that anything can and will happen and that the sun always loses either to the night or to storm clowns and Pacific drive has both and neither are lacking in danger either excellent music throughout the entire game with ass sorted means to listen to the tracks via the incar radio or the garage jukebox voice this was surprisingly good a series of dismod voices on the radio helping you to maneuver through the world or dropping info or chastising you for a poor run or maybe offering a bit of surprise when you do well actually miss some of it some Vital Information but you can always go back in the HUD and read whatever they've said at a later time they all have their own particular style and their delivery is more than good enough to add to the atmosphere and the reason why I'm talking about so much when it comes to atmosphere is because that is an intrinsic part of the gameplay of Pacific Drive let me tell you when I knew that pacific Drive had me it was the moment I was on a deserted Highway and I was contemplating how best to make an Escape Route and I sat back I turned the music on like a damned action movie moment where the hero decides well this is the it plan I only have two steps go forward or don't go at all activated the beacon and gunned it towards the escape with the music blaring that was a moment in time in Pacific drive that I will never forget let's talk about moments and gameplay loops and how I got there first the simple gameplay Loops outfit a car fill its inventory with items you may need to repair in the field pick a place that's sedate and looks like a location you can drive to and take into account the hazards and expectations and the information you get about where you're going charge the car up and leap in warp to the location and then begin investigating sometimes leaping out to use your items to cut Shear slice or smash Parts off of the cars houses trucks bunkers and other items in the game World return to the car throw it in and continue always watching out for hazards and mysterious entities when you're ready to go back you power up your warp device with a mystical glowing orb that I can only assume is completely unsafe for carrying and that is when the crap hits the fan when you activate it the world starts racking you even more so than it did already like a friend trying to stop you from leaving so they can finish a story and they stand in the doorway between you and sweet Freedom if you make it out alive you keep everything and the cycle begins a new with upgrading the car repairing it and outfitting your Bas with new devices and hearing more about the story and what's happened prior and why this entire paranormal normal Zone actually exists if you die during your trip you're warped back home car in pieces and notably the worst for wear and you have to make do with what you have then however it's the delineation of these activities as gross and basic as they sound in that initial example into the finer Parts with a game excels so let's look at that example again and break it down more outfitting the car can be done with crappy metal doors or better and better ones with all the upgrades requiring more of your not always filled inventory dropping items for repair into your car's inventory means you could lose them if you die and it also means less space for grabbing other gadgets that you find and glorious loot when you're out exploring well until later now picking a drive can be as simple as I want to go in a short one and you get detailed information and dive in and take into account every single thing that the data suggests you might discover there a spare drive with almost no resources might actually not be bad if you're looking for car parts and has a high count of abandoned vehicles but that also might require you to make adjustments to the car that you initially planned maybe more or less resources for taking and fixing or outfitting but then you leap in and as you're exploring you find a Wonderland up to its nuts and Supernatural energy and it has a habit to leak life sucking radiation out so now you're trying to maneuver between hot spots consistently and what was initially just a look for car parts has turned into something slightly more dangerous then your car itself the trusty Steed you have spent so much time kidding out with sweet gear shifts and cool stickers starts getting a mind of its own because just like you nothing can enter this world without slowly being altered or changed so that means when you decide to call the teleport portal back you have to worry about the world trying to end your life like cows in the movie Twister as well as a car that has a full-on frontal stroke and just keeps listing to Port the game hides simulation in both serious and funny ways and interaction within the game World in those ways for example you know a game takes some simulation Parts seriously and as a joke when you realize you can accidentally shut a station wagon rear door onto your head if you're trying to hurry too quickly many a child has that memory and if someone like me from the Pacific Northwest where back road trails are basically just two bike paths that were so close together they merged at some point in the past the feeling of the slip and slide of the car on the mud is incredible at first just like in real life you feel like something's wrong with the car as it Yaks to the right and then jerks the wheel to the left trying to pull the Wheel from your hands and you realize that a station wagon may be a car but it's not a particularly well suited one for off-road racing and so understanding the roads the surfaces the damage to the car and where you may go for your run is Paramount for you actually having a successful one Pacific Drive Revels in those odd lines obscurity and mystery in the face of very specific offsetting information let me explain that Snippets radio Transmissions odd bursts of sound or data and never knowing what the world will bring you when you drive into one is directly faced off against specific upgrades for the car exact details for what you need what resources and items may be found during the run and when you need to build out your weird garage that has a magic dumpster in the back that spits out items item that you just so happen to actually require there's all of this back and forth between the mystical and the statistical it's a dangerous line and one that would have failed utterly if it was confusing to players with the inability to understand what matters and what doesn't listen if you want to go out and explore the mystery and deep dive into the lore go for it we have enough small bonuses and helpful systems that you can usually do that but just like the best of the games in these different genres if you decide to go out there and push your luck you got to get crunchy you got to mess with the car the armor the protection you got to slap giant cargo boxes on the side like a damn pack mule so that you can do what you need to do this is helped by a HUD that at times can be confusing but ultimately does work despite its problems that's not to say there weren't some issues though depending on what information you're trying to get from the game for example the game's interface has so many things going on from picking up something to Auto equipping various inventories from cupboards to toolbox to the cars ards to your own backpack that just at the start before trying to really get the gist of the way the game feels it can actually come across as cumbersome be in the middle of ransacking a science lab in the middle of nowhere and then accidentally dropping your picked up item because you didn't know you didn't have enough space in your inventory you wanted to grab something else so you throw it on the forest floor and you end up groping around for a couple seconds can sort of suck until you get the idea of how it all works on console and controller right bumper and Trigger can both feed items into stations as well as pick them up and also interact with an item and that can be a little difficult on its own with just so many different interactions that you can do there's a lot of nested menus in this game when you're upgrading the car you go to a completely different section and look in there are upgrades of all types and it can actually be a little bit difficult but remember one thing that this game does and luckily it does it and that's that it has a legend on almost all of the different systems allowing for you to open it up and see exactly what they're talking about or what upgrade is available for you before you dive in and go across various Pages the game is absolutely filled with upgrades each metad out through blueprints or those used at the crafting station to plop something out many self-constructing items that you can upgrade the base with adding in storage to the vehicle off-road tires sidel lights capture arrays to stun some of the anomalies found in the zone pretty soon your station wagon turns into a hopped up version of the Ghostbusters vehicle the car slowly develops ticks like flaws in a role playing character or wounds in simulation about Warfare doors start to fly open the speakers go Haywire the wiring goes on the fritz or it seems to panic around the spookier parts of the the game world and randomly turns away from it these are things that just consistently add atmosphere and where a lot of the survival games end up losing that atmosphere Pacific Drive ends up doubling down on it all this combines to make a rogue like that's one of the most unique that you may play but make no mistake it's a lot to track luckily you can adjust almost every option that I'm talking about you can jump in you can make it possible for the inventory management to be easier or more difficult you can add more Works to the car so that you can continue to do more runs or less you can have brighter nights easier to find loot how the car handles damage wet roads the traction and how it takes effect even if you close your eyes in the game when it Takes a Tumble to stop motion sickness that means you can play Pacific drive like an adventure game easier settings and just explore the world knowing full well that when you die you set the options for basically allowing you to be somewhat painless when you go back and what that actually does is it turns the game's car into this weird four-wheel daily driver diary with each adjustment and damage that you take on it like turning the page to another day it is a fantastic Visual and Atmospheric representation of continued travel in the title there is a ton going on in this title and more too to discover as you continue to play it and you start to uncover some of the plot and Story the best thing I can say about Pacific drive is it took someone who has grown weary of the Rog likee rinse and repeat but hey look it's a procedurally generated dog returning to its own vom Discovery chain that we've seen so many times and instead made me absolutely yearn to go on another run and yet Wonder at the same time do I need to actually ditch this attempt and try to get back home because this isn't working out so well you become protective over the car and it's not perfect it's like a freaking pissy Buffalo that has some farmand who raised it and kids rode it before it got too big and you're saying dude please be okay today Pacific Drive is a unique one-of-a-kind experience you absolutely should get it it is worth checking out for sure this is a title that I will remember for a long time peace out and enjoy the rest of your week gang gang if you're all set take a look at the projector against the wall this is the Zone Within These borders all matter has lost the ability to hold a constant physical state what that means is the shape size and makeup of just about everything constantly changes until its victims could think of nothing else but the remnant and they always ended with spiraling into madness and disappearing in a mad chase after something

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Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2024