Pacific Drive

September 5, 2024

I played like 15 hours of Pacific Drive before shelving it. I was fairly excited when I first heard about it: I love driving games, the aesthetic seemed up my alley, and the story set-up was alluring. Getting deeper into the game and the forests that you are asked to navigate, I started to realize that it never got much better than the first hour or two.

An important note here is that I am typically turned off by survival/crafting mechanics. I don't enjoy engaging with those systems past the initial learning loop, and it is rare for me to get 'hooked' on the reward of gathering what you need to build a special doodad, tool, or expansion. That was was probably the biggest hurdle for me here once again. This was worsened when a later mission required that I had put my resources into having certain items crafted at that point, requiring me to go into full gather mode for a handful of runs.

Ultimately, it just felt too repetitive. It did not feel fun to put a lot of time into a build, have your trek fall apart, and then be back in the garage an hour later having made no progress. I can see this clicking for people that love crafting/survival games, but that person isn't me.