Pacific Drive has already made its way onto our list of the best survival games on the market right now. Notably, not only does it turn the idea of a "survival" game up on its head, due to it being mainly about a car rather than a human character, but it's also focused more on its narrative than the genre is usually known for. It's also impeccably priced and easy to get into, bundling the package into something deeply interesting and enticing, even if you're not too keen on survival games otherwise.

Of course, Pacific Drive is a rogue-lite game, which means some concessions have definitely been made to the usual assortment of survival gaming tropes. This, however, shouldn't prevent you from giving it a shot. The sheer amount of novelty and out-of-the-box thinking present here will keep you entertained for a good long while, and the sense of progression is - in our book - practically unrivalled in the genre. After spending just over a dozen hours immersed into Pacific Drive, we've come up with a long list of guides and opinions on what the game is like, and below, we'll share all this information with you in short order.

Have fun!

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What is Pacific Drive really about?

Pacific Drive is, of course, a game about driving through improbably inhospitable terrain. That much we knew from the start! It's also the latest take on the classic "anomalous zone" science fiction formula. Basically, the players are transported into the anomalous Olympic Exclusion Zone early in the game, and soon need to work with three clashing scientists to find a way out. Along the way, though, the jalopy - a Remnant - attaches to you like an ontological parasite, threatening to drive you insane.

It's the perfect setup for an out-of-the-box survival experience, really. It's just the right kind of New Weird for niche newcomers, and the gameplay systems lend themselves to the genre perfectly. For example, the fact that your new OEZ vehicle is a Remnant means that it, too, is anomalous. It wants to weird out and do strange things, and one of how Pacific Drive communicates this to the player is via the Quirk system.

Quirks are something that your jalopy develops over time, as you explore the Zone. The car might turn on your headlights whenever you open the trunk, for example. Or, perhaps, not allow you to close a particular door. It gets more complicated and malicious as you go, though, to the point that the jalopy could actively work against you in later stages.

Now, Quirks are just a sample of the broader weirdness of the Zone. It's the sort of thing you can easily immerse yourself into, and the fact that all of Pacific Drive's systems play into this anomalous fantasy is a joy to behold.

Play Pacific Drive on PC today!

How Hardcore is Pacific Drive?

Considering the above, what with potentially dangerous Quirks and all, Pacific Drive can initially give off the impression of a very hardcore, difficult game. Roguelikes and rogue-lites are, after all, often extremely challenging and punishing to the point of frustration. The good news, though, is that Pacific Drive has an extremely granular Easy Mode sort of thing, where the game allows each player to tailor the difficulty precisely to their wishes.

The system goes so far, in fact, that you could very well make yourself entirely invulnerable or, heck, even prevent Remnant Quirks from developing to begin with. If you're in for it for the vibes, Pacific Drive lets you do precisely just that. And, yes, you might have to sacrifice some achievements to enable extreme Easy Mode tweaks, but that's a small price to pay for the flexibility of gameplay that Pacific Drive affords you.

With that in mind, our experience with Pacific Drive is that the game will scale very easily from being a fairly hardcore survival experience to an extremely casual driving "simulator" depending on what you want to get out of it. Praiseworthy stuff, that.

Can you play Pacific Drive for the story?

Another extremely noteworthy feature of Pacific Drive is that its story comes front and centre. Indeed, this is quite unlike most other survival games, as the progression of the narrative is tied directly to the what, why, and how of your travels through the Zone. Fueled with remarkably well-acted audio scenes, Pacific Drive invites you to experience its narrative in a way that makes sense to you, and whether that means fully interacting with its hardcore gameplay systems or not - well, that's your choice to make.

So, in other words, there's a variety of reasons for which you might wish to play Pacific Drive:

And that's just off the top of our proverbial heads, here. So, you've got every reason to play Pacific Drive, even if you're only nominally interested in the concept!

Learn More About Pacific Drive with 2Game!

Don't know how to put your Pacific Drive jalopy into gear? Can't figure out how the game's admittedly arcane research UI functions? Curious as to whether you can make things easier on yourself? We've got all of your questions answered in this assortment of guides and explainers:

Of course, we've not gone in-depth on every single gameplay system in the game, but we find that we've covered all the big questions that our team had as we played the game. These guides will prove most useful to you, too, then, as you jump headfirst into the Olympic Exclusion Zone!

If you're quick, you might even be able to snag the lovely 10% early bird discount here at 2Game, as it'll be live for a little while longer, as more and more people onboard with the game. To grab it, just use one of the links featured on this page, and you're good to go. Unlike your jalopy, of course.

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Pacific Drive has already made its way onto our list of the best survival games on the market right now. Notably, not only does it turn the idea of a “survival” game up on its head, due to it being mainly about a car rather than a human character, but it’s also focused more on […]