Pacific Drive PC review – Don’t stop me now

I never really got into survival and crafting games. They always seem incredibly similar to me, as well as loaded with a bunch of arbitrary things to build more so than any sort of actual gameplay loop. Pacific Drive is very much a survival crafting game, but it does so many unique, interesting things while also having an intuitive core loop and set of hooks that really do a lot to make everything feel compelling. Add in some truly pulse-pounding escapes and you’ve got quite the game.

The premise is simple. You find yourself set up in a garage in an area beset by strange forces. If you want to live, you need to escape. Unlike most other survival games, Pacific Drive is completely centred around a car. You first stumble upon it in all of its rusted, dilapidated glory. As you proceed through the zones to find a way to escape, you’ll need to continually upgrade it little-by-little in the hope of standing a chance at making it through in one piece. This is bolstered by how hands-on the car upgrade aspects are.

You set destinations from your garage and head to them. There isn’t an open world in Pacific Drive, but zones are randomly generated and large. You’ll typically need to drive through multiple to get where you’re going. While out in zones, you can search for crafting materials and destroy components in other cars you find and take those components back with you. You’ll also need to scan things (mostly the threatening anomalies) to unlock new blueprints you can craft. All the while you’ll walk around on foot and in your car to do what needs to be done.

You start out with your car seemingly barely held together with nothing but duct tape and hope. Before long you’ll individually be replacing components on it. Engines, doors, panels, headlights, and tires are what you’ll need to swap out. These components will be damaged, which requires you to repair them, lest they not protect you from the dangerous radiation that often covers zones. Additionally, you need to make sure you’ve got fuel, which you can store in a gas tank and even siphon from abandoned vehicles in the field.

Control-wise, Pacific Drive is entirely played in the first-person. You can walk around normally, which you’ll need to do while at your garage or when scouring for components and the like. Your car is also operated entirely in the first person, where you retain full camera movement despite being seated inside. This is very immersive, but many might be bothered by the lack of a third-person camera here, as all the bumping around while off-roading can lead to motion sickness. However, there was no way around this as so much information is present on the car’s dashboard.

After being in zones for a certain amount of time, they’ll become more and more radioactive. When returning to the garage, you’ll need to find at least one energy source in order to open a portal back. Here, the zone starts destabilising and you need to rush to the exit portal as dangerous radiation closes in on you much like the storm in Fortnite. This is exhilarating, especially considering how the game only saves when you enter a new zone or at your garage. You can return to your garage at any time by abandoning the run you’re on, but this causes you to lose most items by default. There are some really great accessibility options that can completely turn this off for anyone that doesn’t want penalties, though.

Between upgrading the car, making new blueprints, growing your capabilities, and exploring zones, there’s so much to like about Pacific Drive. With the accessibility features, it can be quite lenient and there’s so much creativity and sharp design on-hand that the game’s tank really does feel topped up. Anyone looking for a survival game that stands tall on its own four wheels should absolutely give this one a look.

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