Pacific Drive looks to take us on the most unsettling of road trips

Pacific Drive’s vision of the North American northwest wilderness is a very borked one. Temporal anomalies distort reality and tear everything living and otherwise asunder. Fortunately, you’ve got a station wagon. You wouldn’t think that’s enough to survive this supernatural maelstrom (and it’s not), but it’s the only thing you’ve got, so you’re going to have to keep it fit and trim as you gather the supplies you need to escape an otherwise unfortunate fate. We got to play a small slice of Pacific Drive and it left us with appreciation for on-the-fly car maintenance and a valid fear of most machines that aren’t our own.

Waist deep in temporal distortion

Pacific Drive introduces players to an area known as the Olympic Exclusion Zone, set in the forest wilderness of the Pacific Northwest in an alternate reality 1998. This Zone was supposed to be barred off because everything caught in it is in a dangerous flux of reality-distorting energies that spawn mass out of nowhere, as well as releasing unstable energies that will tear anything caught in them apart. Whether willing or unwilling, you stumble into the Exclusion Zone and it isn’t long before you’re in deep trouble, running from a storm that will undoubtedly undo you if you get caught. Fortunately, you take control of the most unlikely of chariots: A rusted and broken station wagon that just barely has enough pieces intact to drive.

After escaping to a garage, you’re aided by other people caught in the Olympic Exclusion Zone via radio transmission. Tobias and Francis seem to be fellow survivors just curious to see another living being has entered the Zone. They try to help you how they can in hopes that maybe you can help them, too. Meanwhile, Oppy is a scientific and mechanical genius whose garage you stumbled upon. She’s much surlier, but willing to aid you if it gets you out of her hair.

They also inform you that your station wagon isn’t quite a normal vehicle, but rather a Remnant. It’s not a sentient thing but it is bound to you by some scientific mumbo jumbo. It also won’t be easily damaged by the anomalies and is also your only defense against being scrambled like eggs when you’re out in the Zone.

With Oppy, Tobias, and Francis’ help, you venture out to find a means with which you might be able to escape and get back to safety, all while unraveling the mysteries of the Exclusion Zone and its happenings. It’s a cool backdrop that makes for an almost instant real bond with the vehicle as you try to keep it healthy enough to get you where you need to be.

Strange things in the Olympic

Every time you leave the safety of Oppy’s garage to venture into the Zone, it’s a rush to collect supplies and complete the objectives you need to complete, whether it’s unraveling the Zone’s secrets, getting materials to repair your Station Wagon, crafting new tools to aid you, or other such tasks. The tricky part of the Zone is that it has a rogue-like element. Every time you go out, the resources and threats will be randomized, so you can’t rely on your memory in any run. You just have to pack the best you can and rough it.

And rough it, you will. The Zone is full of very dangerous situations. It wasn’t long before I came across floating machines that looked menacing to say the least. If they saw me, they’d immediately come for my wagon to chew on it. There were also what I thought were still-standing zombies in the road. Instead, they may have been husks of people caught in the anomalies. All I know for sure is that they explode when you run them over and do a ton of damage to your car. That doesn’t even include environmental strangeness like electrical towers that will zap you or your car if you get too close, radiation in certain areas, and pillars of machinery that sprouted out of the ground to dangerously curtail your travel. The Zone is menacing and the fact that most of it is different every time you go out makes it all the more unnerving.

It doesn’t help that you often have to exit the safety of your vehicle to forage for supplies. You develop tools over time that help you out, letting you harvest spare parts and fix up your station wagon as you need. Between gathering scrap metal, rubber, electronics, wiring, and more, you end up with a lot of stuff, and it helps you to create all sorts of things, mostly for the car. I was crafting new spare tires to replace shredded ones, creating and repairing panels, doors, and bumpers to keep the wagon’s protective shell intact, siphoning gas to keep the tank full, and even crafting battery jumpers to juice up the vehicle if its battery ran out of power. All the while, you need to keep an eye over your shoulder and try not to stay out too long. It creates an excellent atmosphere of anxiousness and dread until you’re back in the driver’s seat.

When you finish what you need to do, you have to find special power supplies called anchors that collapse the instance you’re in, but let you escape back to the garage. Stay too long and the area will become a tempest of anomalies that will damage you and your vehicle, so that last run becomes a dangerous race against time. It’s stressful and exhilarating like few things I’ve really seen before in a survival game.

Make sure your tank’s full

I really liked the gameplay beat of Pacific Drive, even when it was as simple as collecting pieces for an antenna. This game is filled with beautifully dense natural landscapes, the remnants of civilization looking to be picked over, and unnerving creatures and occurrences that will keep you on edge if not directly threatening you. I can’t wait to see what kind of complicated objectives I have to take on as we get further into the game, and we won’t be waiting long for it either. Pacific Drive is a game like few I’ve played before, and it just may end up being an early winner in 2024’s year of gaming.

This preview is based on an early PC edition supplied by the publisher. Pacific Drive comes out on PC and PlayStation 5 on February 22, 2024.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.