I may not have my driver’s license, but that didn’t stop me from loving Pacific Drive
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Have you ever found yourself lost in post-apocalyptic forests while being chased by explosive mannequins and hovering robots that can electrocute you? If not then Pacific drive plans to change that.
This action-adventure game is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland called the ‘Olympic Exclusion Zone’. Armed with a trusty station wagon and a handful of collected materials, you take on the world as you navigate all of the weird, wonderful, and deadly mysteries this world has to offer.
TechRadar Gaming got to sit down and play a little demo of this upcoming game with Seth Rosen, the design lead for Pacific drive. In this demo, we only got to see a snippet of everything this driving sandbox game has to offer. There were exploding ‘tourists’, haunted abandoned shacks, and loads of exciting enemies (literally).
Pimp my ride
Despite the fact that in reality I cannot drive, a quality that will become very clear in this article, Pacific drive felt realistic enough to create heavy suspense as the station wagon stumbled down dark, foggy roads, but simple enough that you don’t have to be a car mechanic to understand all the wonderful upgrades and enhancements you can make to your car.
In my bravest moments, I ventured outside the protective shield of my vehicle, into abandoned gas stations and rotting wooden shacks, searching for materials that would be vital to my excursion through the Exclusion Zone. There wasn’t a whole lot of material to get hold of at every location, so every single item mattered. I collected rubber, nails, gas and of course some stylish clothes, all of which I could use to upgrade and repair my car – while looking cool.
The repairs and upgrades you can make to your station wagon are vast and personal, but every choice has consequences. If you like off-road driving, you can equip your car with solid tires and reinforced windows. But that extra grip on your tires will slow you down on the road. Fortunately, every time you go back to your garage, you can reinvent your vehicle to offset or reset such decisions, and prioritize speed, defense, or even more aggressive builds. It’s completely up to you and how you want to navigate the exclusion zone.
Besides car repairs, there is a whole world waiting to be discovered. While post-apocalyptic adventure games are nothing new, Pacific drive adds a refreshing twist to the genre by, metaphorically, binding you to your vehicle. You can run into the woods without it, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend it; after all, the beasts in the unknown can run fast.
I enjoyed a lot Pacific drive, and the eerie atmosphere and simple controls worked wonders in immersing me in the dying world. That said, it’s not exactly a walk in the park. I managed to get catapulted into the air, overturn my car while trying to hit a ‘tourist’, and almost failed to make it down the world’s scariest water park tube slide – so it’s probably best if I don’t prioritize getting my driver’s license yet.
For more exciting action, you might want to check out the best fps games. However, if you’d rather lean more towards a post-apocalyptic experience, you might want to check out our list of the best zombie games.