Pacific Drive review

Our VerdictA novel and challenging survival game that puts you in the driver’s seat of one the best cars in videogames.

Our Verdict

A novel and challenging survival game that puts you in the driver’s seat of one the best cars in videogames.

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NEED TO KNOWWhat is it?A singleplayer first-person driving survival game with maybe the best car everExpect to pay: $30/£25Developer: Ironwood StudiosReviewed on: Intel i7-9700K, RTX 4070 Ti, 16GB RAMMultiplayer?Nope.Link:Official site

NEED TO KNOW

What is it?A singleplayer first-person driving survival game with maybe the best car everExpect to pay: $30/£25Developer: Ironwood StudiosReviewed on: Intel i7-9700K, RTX 4070 Ti, 16GB RAMMultiplayer?Nope.Link:Official site

With sincere apologies to the Magnum Opus from Mad Max, the Saud Kruger Orca passenger liner from Elite Dangerous, and Arthur Morgan’s horse, I have a new favorite ride: the station wagon in Pacific Drive.

It didn’t look like much at first: just a typical late ’80s family wagon with wood paneling and a hatchback trunk. But over the course of the last 35 hours I’ve turned it into an armor-plated, radiation-resistant tank positively bristling with sci-fi gadgets. And it’s only a little bit haunted.

Those upgrades (and those ghosts in the shell) are the result of barreling through a hellscape of nightmarish weather, crumbling roads, and more horrifying anomalies per square mile than the entire Stalker trilogy combined. Pacific Drive, the debut game from developer Ironwood Studios, is a first-person driving survival game where you explore a spooky and deadly exclusion zone to gather the resources you need to soup up your ride.

I’m declaring it right now: the station wagon in Pacific Drive is one of the best vehicles in videogames, ever. Unfortunately you have to spend a lot of time leaving it behind to run around on foot, and that’s where the game falters a bit. But when you’re roaring through the hostile world in that glorious, ridiculous wagon, Pacific Drive puts an exciting and fresh new spin (ha ha, because tires) on the survival genre.

Joy Ride

(Image credit: Ironwood Studios)

A station wagon

After mysterious science experiments in Washington state’s heavily forested Olympic Peninsula went horribly awry, the government built a towering concrete wall around it and called it quits. Trapped inside the barricades of what’s now called the Olympic Exclusion Zone, you’ve got nothing but your clunker, a workbench in a dimly lit garage, and the guidance of a few oddball scientists who chat to you (and each other) over the radio.

The zone isn’t an open world: it’s broken up into maps called junctions, with crumbling roads that wind through foggy pine forests, misty marshes, and charred hills. The only hope of escape is to explore the world one junction at a time, scavenging for supplies among the cluttered cabins, rusted car frames, and abandoned science workshops the government left behind. Back at your garage you use what you find to craft new and better car parts, research new tech, and repair any damage your wagon sustained on the journey. Most junctions will open up roads to new ones, and your map of the zone will slowly grow until you can chain together long multi-junction trips deep into the peninsula.

(Image credit: Ironwood Studios)

Driving survival game

Developer Ironwood Studios seems to even know how rough its game can get: one biome’s attributes are labeled “Exhausting Explosions.” They sure were.

Praying my car’s faltering parts would hold on just a few seconds more as I careened through the trees to reach a safe exit just as a mega storm hit

That’s an outlier though. Usually I found Pacific Drive a thrilling challenge, leaping out of my wagon to loot a building or peel the steel off an abandoned car, scurrying back just as a hovering menace began descending upon me, and flooring it while veering left and right to avoid spiky anomalies chewing through the ground, my dashboard bathed in sparks from an electrical blast. Gritting my teeth, praying my car’s faltering parts would hold on just afew seconds moreas I careened through the trees to reach a safe exit just as a mega storm hit. Exhilarating.

Irradiator fluid

(Image credit: Ironwood Studios)

Driving survival game

In Pacific Drive nearly all of the survival systems are focused on your car. You, the driver, have a health bar… and that’s it. Your wagon, however, is a network of wonderfully modeled vital organs. Doors, panels, bumpers, windows, tires, and other parts and pieces each have their own health bar and are susceptible to physical, electrical, acid, or radiation damage, plus loads of other status effects: tires can go flat, fuel tanks can leak, batteries can short out, wheels can become loose.

And no matter how diligently you tend to your car’s bumps and scrapes, over time everything slowly wears out. Just like in real life, you can patch a flat tire repeatedly but eventually it will go bald and have to be replaced. The durability system is rough, but I kinda love that components in Pacific Drive eventually die. Duct tape and a blowtorch can prolong the life of a part, but not forever. It feels fair.

What’s the equivalent of eating and drinking, for cars? Gasoline and electricity, I guess, and I’ve done everything I can to keep my car’s metal belly full of nutrition. I have a battery under the hood but also one on the roof and a third mounted in the back seat. (Somewhat alarmingly that one has begun spraying sparks, but unless it explodes I’m keeping it there.) I have two ridiculous gizmos I crafted and lashed to the sides of my car: a turbine to capture wind power, and a sci-fi gadget that somehow converts rainwater into electricity. That’s science, right?

(Image credit: Ironwood Studios)

Driving survival game

The important thing is while driving in the wind and rain (it’s the Pacific Northwest, so that’s almost every trip), my battery will now slowly recharge itself. One of the most satisfying moments in Pacific Drive was when I glanced at my dashboard and for the first time and saw my car battery meter slowly fill instead of troublingly drain.I’m a good car dad, I thought.I’m feeding my beautiful wagon-child.

I love this damn car.

A full battery is massively important because I’ve got other crafted science gizmos crammed all over my car, and they need tons of juice, including a resource radar that can pinpoint the junk I need during supply runs, which makes each excursion more of a surgical strike than a cross-my-fingers search. I have a massive floodlight mounted on the side of the car for night missions, and a device that synthesizes fuel (somehow) from the zone’s weird atmosphere.

I also have a literal lifesaver: a device that heals me when I’m sitting in the driver’s seat, which is much better than standing outside the car and using a health kit. Best of all, I’ve got a forcefield I can activate that keeps those damn hovering anomalies from grabbing parts of my car and absconding with them.

Here’s an actual quote from me the first time I watched those gross monsters trying to latch onto my car with their tentacles only to bounce harmlessly off my glowing energy shield: “Ha ha ha! Suck it!”

I love this damn car.

(Image credit: Ironwood Studios)

Driving survival game

Adorning my car with batteries and generators solves some problems but creates others. That roof battery and resource radar don’t leave room for, say, a massive secondary gas tank or storage container big enough to fit a set of spare tires in. That means more time spent refueling and patching damaged wheels, which means more time standing outside with anomalies bearing down on us.

Before each trip I need to spend time thinking about which attachments will be the most useful based on what I’ve learned about the zone’s different junctions and hazards. Like other great survival games such as Valheim and Outward, Pacific Drive gives me the enjoyment of a long pre-trip planning phase where I try to anticipate what I’ll need, packing just enough to survive while still leaving room for everything I might find and bring back.

Odd in 60 seconds

(Image credit: Ironwood Studios)

Driving survival game

Repairs aren’t the only attention you have to lavish on your car: your wagon will also develop “quirks” due to exposure to the bizarre reality of the zone. My car’s first quirk developed while I was in the zone in the middle of the night, already jumping in fear at every groan or creak from the woods. As I ran back to my car I noticed the passenger door was open—weird, I was pretty sure I hadn’t opened it. I began getting paranoid as I noticed it open again a bit later. My mind raced: did something invisibleget into the car with me?

Eventually I discovered that whenever I got out of my car the passenger door would pop open. It was a quirk, and not the last my car would contract. At one point slamming my trunk shut would make the horn honk, a noise that startled me every time it happened. Diagnosing and curing quirks is handled with a fun minigame in the garage using a terminal to pick words from four columns to form if/then statements, such as SHIFTER / IS IN DRIVE (the cause of the quirk) so HOOD / OPENS (the quirk itself). If you diagnose your quirk correctly, the computer tells you what you need to craft to fix it.

(Image credit: Ironwood Studios)

Driving survival game

Step on it

(Image credit: Ironwood Studios)

Driving survival game

Much as I love driving my quirky car through the zone and tending to its every need in my garage, the actual act of gathering all those resources does eventually become a bit of a trudge. There’s a thrill to scavenging for a while: leaving your car feels like a vulnerable, naked act as you scuttle fearfully into a building to collect junk or scrap the doors and tires off a wreck. As anomalies and storms begin closing in, adrenaline will make the act of looting a cabin feel like a frantic and fun race against the clock.

I’m always thrilled to roar back into the zone for another fruitful mission or frightful failure

But then, this is a driving game, not a farming game. If I need something, I’ve gotta hit the road. Yes, the occasional overly-brutal zone excursion may leave me exasperated, and sometimes the resource collection tasks feel heavily repetitive, but they can’t overshadow my fondness for this silly sci-fi station wagon. I’m always thrilled to roar back into the zone for another fruitful mission or frightful failure, and I’ll happily spend ages in the garage repairing and replacing every single component using scrap metal, duct tape, and lots of love.

The Verdict86Read our review policyPacific DriveA novel and challenging survival game that puts you in the driver’s seat of one the best cars in videogames.

The Verdict

86Read our review policyPacific DriveA novel and challenging survival game that puts you in the driver’s seat of one the best cars in videogames.

86Read our review policy

Pacific DriveA novel and challenging survival game that puts you in the driver’s seat of one the best cars in videogames.

Pacific Drive

A novel and challenging survival game that puts you in the driver’s seat of one the best cars in videogames.

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Best Survival Game 2024: Pacific DriveThe director of Saw and Insidious is turning one of 2024’s best survival games into a TV show

Best Survival Game 2024: Pacific Drive

A station wagon on a dark road through the woods

The director of Saw and Insidious is turning one of 2024’s best survival games into a TV show

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Latest

The Last of Us season 2 trailer is a brief look at a story you should probably just play yourself in April

the last of us season 2 trailer

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Our Verdict#

Joy Ride#

Irradiator fluid#

Odd in 60 seconds#

Step on it#

Our Verdict

Joy Ride

Irradiator fluid

Odd in 60 seconds

Step on it