Pacific Drive packs up survival games and takes them on the road

I’ve already played a preview build of Pacific drive, I felt confident when I started my playthrough for this review. I had learned a lot in those few hours about this raunchy but engaging driving/survival/roguelite game – knowledge I felt I could apply from the get-go. I figured I could just start optimizing my resource collection and applying my knowledge of some of its arcane systems. I envisioned a smooth flow of the first missions as I explored the crumbling, glitched reality of the Olympic Exclusion Zone in the Pacific Northwest, gradually fortifying my shabby station wagon against the wild dangers of this irradiated wilderness.

But the Olympic Exclusion Zone, and Pacific drivehad other ideas.

I didn’t know everything, not even close. I hadn’t yet realized that it was a good idea to destroy the radios and computers littering abandoned electronics settlements. I had neglected to make myself a battery jumper. I made sure to conserve fuel, always putting the car in park and turning off the ignition, but since I hadn’t yet explored the recipe for a rudimentary portable flashlight, I left the car’s headlights on to illuminate my foraging. Fatal error. During an early story mission I completely drained the car’s battery.

The dice roll that determined the conditions I rode in was also much tougher this time. It was night, it was raining heavily and the intersection I was in was very unstable. The ground rumbled and moved. Pockets of blistering, acrid fog crackled around me. A floating, sentinel-like machine grabbed my car with a cable with a suction cup on it and dragged it against a tree, severely weakening the already thin, rusting panels. I was on life support, metaphorically speaking, and I couldn’t see where I was going at all. I focused my vision on the glowing map screen on the passenger side and tried to navigate through it, but it was no use. I resorted to aborting the run, and my car limped back into the garage, battered, missing a door, and stripped of all the loot I’d collected. Deep breath. Try again.

Pacific drive is bold, original and brilliantly conceived, stealing design concepts and gameplay loops from various genres and blending them into an identity that is strongly its own. It’s clearly a racing game first and foremost: as a (perhaps) reluctant explorer of the walled Olympic Peninsula, the site of disastrous scientific experiments in an alternate 1950s (it’s now the late 1990s), the unnamed player character – just mentioned “Driver” – finds and supernaturally bonds with an old station wagon that you use to drive deeper into the Zone in search of answers. You often get out and go around on foot, but the car provides essential transport, protection and storage for loot.

Structurally, Pacific drive also has some things in common with roguelikes – particularly roguelites, but don’t let that distinction make you think it’s in any way forgiving – and even Soulslikes. You’ll be taken through a series of random runs and you’ll use a map to choose your route. With few exceptions, the junctions that serve as links in the route vary in layout and conditions each time you visit them. In addition to the mission objectives, the aim is to get as far as possible, collecting as much loot as possible along the way, before activating a gate that will take you home safely. If you die or abandon your run, the loot will be lost and your car will be further damaged.

This is where the stakes are really set. Missions or longer self-directed runs can last an hour or more, and there is no way to save. As the stakes increase and your car sustains damage and its battery and fuel reserves deplete, Pacific drive can become scary and tense. All kinds of eldritch hazards can pop up as you run: wandering radiation pools; networks of sparking pylons bursting from the ground; tumbling creatures made of possessed scrap metal that attach themselves to your car, force you out, pluck them off and throw them away. Scrambling across the country to a gateway (a huge column of light that pierces the ground) before you are consumed by the raging storm it brings is always a heart-in-your-mouth moment.

Image: Ironwood Studios/Kepler Interactive

Pacific drive also fits into the current trend of crafting-focused survival games – albeit in its own unique way. As you might do in games like Palworld or Valheim, you spend your time gathering resources and turning them into crafting tools, supplies and upgrades, as well as researching new recipes in a very deep and versatile technology tree. But instead of investing all this work into your base, almost all of the work goes into the car. You can strengthen it with panels that absorb radiation or electrical charge; increase storage; and add new lighting and gadgets.

The genius of Pacific drive is that the focus for the traditional collect-and-craft loops of the survival genre is on a single object: your car. It’s your base, companion, armor, arsenal, and skills, all embodied in one stoic, rickety chassis. It goes with you everywhere, can take any knock for you and requires constant maintenance and adjustments. It’s adaptable, but not enough that it doesn’t have a character of its own, reflected in the loose steering, springy suspension and firm, rumbling momentum. One of the game’s nicest touches is the ‘quirks’ system, where your car develops weird, random peccadilloes (like the hood popping open when you shift into reverse) that you can then diagnose and repair using an old computer in the garage.

Image: Ironwood Studios/Kepler Interactive

Pacific drive has a specificity, a sense of loving authorship that is often missing from the open horizons and do-anything mentality of survival games. However much the setting is influenced by the monumental dystopianism of Half-life 2, the surreal hinterland of the classic science fiction novel Picnic along the roador the creepy paintings of Simon Stalenhag, it’s also a faded postcard of childhood road trips or perhaps cross-country jaunts to college in a heavily loaded old banger. The car radio plays melancholic indie rock and the story is charmingly told by a bickering trio of Zone residents who communicate with you via the radio; they’ve been stuck here for decades, playing your apocalyptic scenario like a comforting audio sitcom.

This distinction is, I think, what I keep coming back to Pacific drive, even when my runs are fickle and brutal, and hours of playtime yield meager rewards. It’s a game with a lot of mysteries I have yet to solve, and seriously deep systems I have yet to fully explore; and every time I roll open the garage door and pull it out, the game picks up all that complexity and takes it with it. It’s all invested in a world that’s enchanting, both in its strangeness and its deep familiarity, and in a car that’s a truly great video game protagonist in its own right. There is always another roll of the dice and another spin of the wheel. Maybe this time the Zone will be kind; maybe you’ll make it this time.

Pacific drive is now available for PlayStation 5 and Windows PC. The game was reviewed using a pre-release download code from Kepler Interactive. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy can be found here.