Pacific Drive’s Busted Up Station Wagon Will Have You Falling for the PS5 Survival Game

The aim of the game’s creator, Ironwood Studios, is for you to grow close to the vehicle. That was the main lesson from a presentation of the run-based survival game Pacific Drive. You’re alone in the Olympic Exclusion Zone, a mysterious region of the Pacific Northwest that’s filled with paranormal activity, along with a beat-up American station wagon.

We were shown both sides of this unusual title during the demonstration. You will set out from your garage into the exclusion zone to look for parts and resources while playing this entirely first-person game. When you get back, you’ll use everything you looted to build new tools, make upgrades, and repair anything that needs it so you can keep exploring your strange surroundings.

Before you start, you map out a path that will take you to a special kind of energy that will enable you to activate a portal and return to the garage. You’ll need to keep your head moving while out on the road (or lack of road, if you’re feeling daring). The Olympic Exclusion Zone is full of dangers, but you can find plenty of wrecked cars and buildings that will provide some valuable resources. Strange occurrences like creatures that will drag your vehicle around, bizarre weather patterns, and columns of erupting earth are all attempting to total your vehicle.

Ideally, you packed some tools and supplies so you can top off your fuel or make some quick repairs. If you want to have any chance of returning to the garage unharmed, you’ll need to get out and keep your car in good condition. Things start to pick up once you locate the energy that unlocks the exit; a shrinking circle will appear on your satellite display, and if you leave that area, you’re in for a particularly rough ride.

Either you’ll reach the exit, or you won’t, and if you don’t, some of the resources you’ve gathered will be lost. You’ll return to the base in either case. You have the opportunity to make repairs, put in better components, create new machinery, and make useful supplies. The game is essentially about improving your car so you can explore new biomes and acquire better parts to further enhance your vehicle.

The busted up banger seems to be the center of the whole thing, and it is obvious that the goal is to make you fall in love with it. At the start of the game, the car is found in its stock form, and you will gradually transform it into a true beast. You are kept fully immersed in the experience because the game is only played in first person, even while you are driving. Even the HUD elements are authentic to the world, and the dashboard of your car contains most of the information you need during a run. We anticipate that players will grow quite attached to their trusted vehicle once they begin customizing it with their favorite components and applying the paint of their choice.

It will even start to exhibit strange behaviors, like somehow turning on the headlights when turning on the wiper blades. Despite the fact that cars are inanimate machines, any driver will tell you that they have a “personality,” so this feels true to the experience of owning a car while also advancing the supernatural theme.

Although it’s obvious that the car is the focal point, as you advance, the environment will also change. Every run, which lasts about an hour, contains loot as well as tidbits of lore and story. The plot of the game has an end, despite the structure of the game being heavily influenced by roguelikes. Your adventures in the exclusion zone need not end when the story does because Ironwood Studios wants you to be able to play on after the credits.

This brief presentation on Pacific Drive makes us eager to experience it for ourselves, just like the debut trailer did. It has a lot of potential to combine survival, crafting, and driving that piece of junk through the procedurally generated environments. Having said that, we might never forgive the staff at Ironwood Studios if they pull a Shadow of the Colossus on us. Man, we already have too much affection for the car.