Pacific Drive Reviews
Pacific Drive offers a thrilling and unique experience that seamlessly blends the excitement of a road trip with the terror of the supernatural. The game quickly won me over, just as it’s sure to win over the imagination and thrill of players who give the game a much-deserved try.
Pacific Drive is a must-play for narrative fans or those who want a more rewarding survival experience that doesn’t rely on the genre’s usual tropes. Heck, even if that’s not a big enough selling point, the game has an excellent soundtrack.
Developer Ironwood Studios’ first go at the rogue-like genre has not only come out fresh as it gets but also put such a unique spin on a classic crafting/survival formula that I sincerely hope the term “road-lites” takes off. Hardly a pothole was hit riding along the anomalous, unstable ridgelines, with a perfectly-tuned balance of cautious material gathering, intense and atmospheric car treks, and wild sci-fi worldbuilding. I was absolutely enamored by the “car”-acterization of the humble station wagon that’s your mobile base, with the Quirk system being a highlight of the various gameplay mechanics that made Pacific Drive’s number one character stand out, just as it should. Truly, I felt like it was me and my clunker-bucket against the world, or, at least, this hellish sci-fi melting pot we were stranded in. Ironwood Studios has a sunny, clear road ahead for them, so here’s hoping they keep on truckin’, knowing their first IP went off without a hitch.
Pacific Drive is a mystery that draws you in little by little and rewards you for staying dedicated with both a better vehicle and more ridiculous threats. Every excursion left me wondering just what I’d discover, both from survival and story standpoints, as well as what kind of crazy threats were going to try to make my life harder. Fun and interesting characters and a pretty great soundtrack help to keep things fun, but maintaining the station wagon is easily the most compelling part. It’s your best friend through thick and thin, even if it’s trying to eat your mind. That can be somewhat forgiven since it makes up the core of an ultimately great rogue-lite survival game.
After four years of development, the good people at Ironwood Studio join forces with Kepler Interactive to launch Pacific Drive. A very personal title with a brutal charisma that proves once again that small studios still have a lot to contribute to the videogame industry.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Pacific Drive is a punishing roguelike at times, but the thrill of each run provides plenty of variety and excitement in how you approach it.
Pacific Drive is one of those amazing games that I’ve fallen in love with despite it doing so much I’m inclined to loathe. It’s brilliant in its externalization of survival gameplay with a car that acts perfectly in its dual role of burden and bearer. Its humor, style, and a luxury assortment of modifier settings have kept me spellbound. I can paint my car pink. Game of the year contender.
Pacific Drive offers a road trip like no other, boasting immaculate sound design and a classic '90s conspiracy delivered through a compact survival-crafting roguelike loop.
Olympic Peninsula and its Exclusion Zone have hidden many secrets for more then three decades and now, after I got pulled in by a mysterious anomaly, it is finally time to reveal them all! But this is no happy tale of a handsome protagonist, but a mere mortal driver's storyline, which wiggles and twists around a postapocalyptic wasteland. And what better tool to navigate it than a sturdy vehicle, armored with the knowledge of brilliant scientists and quirky tech, that will surely protect me from the horrors of this dystopian world'
Review in Slovak | Read full review
When you get down to it, Pacific Drive is a quietly brilliant game. There's nothing that comes to mind that is like it, and it's an outwardly simple concept that also has a variety of layers. While out on a run, you deftly drive around anomalies and sometimes escape a junction with a tattered car by the skin of your teeth. Other times, you're outfitting your car in the garage while the jukebox is playing, carefully considering what to bring with you and which parts you should have on the car. This game is exactly what I had hoped it would be when I initially heard about it, and it's been a long time since I've played something so boldly different.
Finding the balance between survival and cozy Sunday drives is tricky, but Pacific Drives manages to nail it. This is a road I want to travel again without a doubt.
Pacific Drive is fantastic once you sit down and play it correctly. The game's core mechanic is survival, but many might fail to see that. Anyone who enjoys survival games should definitely give this one a go. Even if you usually don't enjoy survival games, you might be interested in building and driving your car. But before you do, you might want to fiddle with the levels of difficulty and accessibility settings to find a setting that suits your playing style. Pacific Drive is fantastic; driving through it has been a unique experience and arguably the year's most unique survival game entries.
Pacific Drive thoughtfully translates simple yet overlooked human aspects through an experience that is truly unique and unforgettable.
A novel and challenging survival game that puts you in the driver's seat of one the best cars in videogames.
For their first feature, my heartfelt applause for Ironwood Studios. Not only have they taken the roguelite formula to new ground, integrating driving, deep survival, and a captivating sci-fi story, which makes sense of their original world. Despite the bugs or the fact that the roguelite formula doesn't appeal to you, there is "something" about it.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Courage should be rewarded, always. And Pacific Drive is a brave game, offering unique gameplay focused on the exploration of the Zone and the relationship between man and vehicle. We will feel helpless and powerless most of the time, banking on car upgrades to have any hope of surviving in this bleak and hostile environment. The action is slow paced as the protagonist is not an Invincible Super Soldier but an ordinary man in his beat-up car, and this may turn away some fans of driving games, but the high point of this production is the story.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Pacific Drive is a game absolutely dripping in atmosphere and excellent spooky vibes, with an exploration-to-looting-to-tense extraction-to-crafting/upgrading and back again gameplay loop that doesn't get old, and a story that is both emotional and intriguing. While pacing issues do hamper it down some, that doesn't damage the experience enough to leave it off anyone's must-play list for 2024.
Pacific Drive is an intriguing blend of science fiction storytelling and simulator gameplay mechanics. If you typically shy away from roguelikes, this might be the one that finally nestles its way into your psyche as you tell yourself "Just one more run".
Just like the Daewoo Lanos I inherited from my sister when I eventually got my license, Pacific Drive is an imperfect but undeniably charming experience. It's filled to the brim with sensational atmosphere, intriguing mystery and edge-of-your-seat cinematic adventure. If you can buckle up and push through the foibles of this otherwise fantastic survival 'roadlite', I guarantee you won't regret getting behind the wheel.
Pacific Drive is like a road trip: It requires a lot of preparation and planning, but the journey is always worth the experience. Just watch out for the radiation.