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There is a lot to like about Pacific Drive's tense, vehicle based horror but the thing that impresses me most is how well it captures the very essence of 'car'. Not just the driving, because that's a given, it's everything else: the physicality of popping open the trunk to drop things inside, remembering to put it in park so it doesn't roll downhill, turning on wipers in the rain, even the tinny sound of the radio absolutely channels the vibe of just you and your wheels on the road.
Road age
That strange feeling of remote isolation and security you can get from being in a car is ever present here - driving along and listening to Pacific Drive's excellent soundtrack on the radio perfectly captures that reclusive sense of being alone behind the wheel. It's all too easy to slip into that driving flow state where you become detached from the world outside and it’s almost a shock when you get out and have to deal with it.
That detachment is even more impressive given that, in this case, 'the world' is full of unstable, reality shifting anomalies that can tear you and the car to pieces if you're not careful. For one reason or another you've found yourself trying to escape an exclusion zone where some mysterious experiments have rendered the area uninhabitable. Strange energy fields and lights crackle and shift between the trees, weird rock formations rise out of the ground and there are creepy test dummy style mannequins scattered around in various contorted poses. You know: fun stuff.
There's shades of everything from STALKER to Annihilation here, where the zone isn't a thing to be understood or solved, it's just a force of nature to be survived and endured. And your car is key to that. There's a very roguelike loop of setting out to gather supplies to improve and upgrade your ride that's instantly satisfying - scrapping abandoned derelict vehicles to gather the metal and plastics you need to repair your own panels and doors, or build upgraded parts to strengthen what you have.
Auto motivation
It's an essential loop as well because your car gets absolutely beaten up, whether that's from swirling energy storms or your own bad driving. It's not unusual to end up back at your base with chunks missing, leading you to ripping the whole thing apart to build it back better to go out again. There's a huge parts and gear upgrade tree to master that I only scratched the surface of in my short hands on. But the depth and scope looks impressive and suggests a real 'see how far you've come' growth to your progression when you look back later.
The constant upgrading and tuning of your car is only part of the story when it comes to bonding with it. It's literally your only island in a storm as you explore and, while the car driving vibes are immaculate, the horror movie pressure of leaving it to do anything is exquisite. There are strange noises everywhere, many of which have yet to be explained in my preview (and I hope never are). Distended and misshapen drones float through the trees, casting difficult to range light beams between the branches. It constantly feels like there's something out there somewhere, and getting out to break down a truck for parts or explore some buildings feels instantly fraught, like so many film scenes where leaving the car was a bad idea.
It's a great expression of all that act 1 anxiety and tension in horror where the threat is still largely all in your head as you run around. What was the noise? Did something move over there? Why can't I get this done faster! I keep thinking of that scene in Jurassic Park where Nedry - the guy who gets spat on by the frilly dilophosaurus - is desperately trying to sort out winches. There's no real immediately obvious danger initially, the panicked fumbling is all self made. Parts of Pacific Heights often feel like every moment where someone is scrambling through a set of keys and ramming the wrong ones into locks.
That pressure is ramped up even more by wandering storms you can see roaming on your map that might force you to take a different route if you don't want to buckle up and take the hit. Then there's the way you get out of a zone when you're done. To do that you have to collect energy from anchors stabilising the area, when you have enough you can activate an exit portal you then must drive to and escape through. However, activating it collapses what little coherence there is around you, forcing a breakneck race to safety as a deadly storm closes in, with a very battle royal circle shrinking around you. It's a climatic end to every run as you completely heave road safety out the window, head off track and just start straight up aiming for smaller trees you think you can take, for a short cut…
Road works
As I only played a short preview section there's a few things I'm a little wary of in places. There's a few moments where objectives or goals felt a little unclear. Both the UI and general density of info can be a little overwhelming at first and I can't tell yet if I was missing things on occasions, or just needed more time to absorb it all. Similarly, I ended up at one point with an almost completely destroyed car and none of the things I needed to repair it, forcing me to go out near death for a supply run. Again, that might just be the inexperience of the early hours and something that irons out over a longer play.
It's a great experience overall so far though and one I'm desperate to play more of after my brief taster. The concept doesn't feel too unusual to say out loud - explore a dangerous area and gather supplies to level up and go again - but the atmosphere of it all and the relationship you form with the car really elevate the experience into something I wasn't expecting to be so smitten with.
