Recent reviews by Sir Hank

Simply the best VR game currently on the market, even after 6 years at the top. No contest, I would even place this significantly over Half-Life: Alyx, and 1.0 made it better than ever.

TLDR: I would say this is an above-average game for someone that finds the premise interesting and is okay with no combat and a pretty repetitive gameplay loop. Unfortunately, I personally cannot recommend it because my 31 hour save was corrupted after a random crash.

I am very sad to write this review, as I have been looking forward to the release of this game since I first heard about it. I will start by stating that this negative recommendation is due to my own poor experience, and is more meant as a warning to players and message to the developers in hopes that they can fix some of the cons and technical issues I experienced in future updates. This is a full review of my time with the game, so if it sounds good to you and you aren't worried about the technical problems, then I hope you have a good time!

I have been looking for a game like for a while- ever since playing The Long Drive and Mon Bazou, I really wanted to see a more fleshed-out survival/driving game, and for the most part this is it!

Pros:

I really enjoy the randomly generated but logical-feeling maps-- I feel like a lot of games fail here with super repetitive layouts, but the maps in Pacific Drive feel fun and varied every time.

The driving system is fun and fairly detailed, with different types of tires and road surfaces affecting acceleration and grip.

There are a large range of interesting and useful gadgets to upgrade your car.

The car maintenance and upgrade system is approachable and not overly complicated/realistic.

The story is very compelling and the voice acting is great.

Cons:

Not enough variety in the points of interest-- most buildings have similar or the same exteriors with only minor variation on the interiors. Off the top of my head, there were probably 12 different types with 3 or 4 interior variations of each.

It can get a bit boring since the progression is a bit slower than I would like, resulting in some hour-long drives where you just collect common resources while unlocking additional routes for later runs, which can feel like wasted time.

The gameplay loop is fairly passive, with the only real threats being semi-static anomalies and the battle-royale-style closing storm, which can make the game a bit boring a lot of the time.

I wish there were lot more songs or radio stations- while the ones included are very fitting and some are pretty good, when I consider the length of the game (seemingly around 50-70 hours at the pace I was going), they became tiresome pretty quickly. Many songs have very repetitive lyrics or hooks that make it so that you are sure to notice every time they repeat. On that note, the lack of instrumental-only music or talk radio channels is a huge missed opportunity. This problem is extra annoying because there are random radio transmissions that sometimes play between songs, which means you need to have the radio playing all the time if you don't want to miss them.

Lack of replayability- maybe my thoughts on this would change if I could have finished the game, but as it stands, I currently have no desire to start a new save file and start grinding out hundreds of materials, several dozen upgrades, and hours of routes again. For a game that has a lot of random generation, the game is surprisingly linear.

Technical Issues:

After 31 hours of grinding about halfway through the game (upgrades and achievements-wise), my game randomly crashed in the garage. Upon restarting the game and loading back in, my save is no longer listed. I checked my local save folder and it is there, but the game just won't recognize it. I tried making a backup of the file, copying it into a different slot, disabling cloud saves, deleting the latest cloud save, and verifying game integrity, but nothing helped.

Personal Preference:

I really wish the game had combat and/or more directly threatening enemies of some kind. At very least, if there were more aggressive ways for the player to deal with anomalies, I think it would spice up the gameplay loop quite a lot- currently it is just running or driving past/around anomalies, stopping, collecting loot, and then driving again, which does get a bit boring. There is some minor interacting throwing flares or using defensive car options, but they are all reactionary and based around avoidance rather than confrontation.

I also wish the game was scary. Maybe this was just my misunderstanding, but for a game so reminiscent of Stalker, Metro, and Into the Radius, I was let down by the complete lack of horror. Since there are no directly aggressive enemies and the anomalies are all just piles of scrap, the mannequins have to do the majority of the heavy lifting here, and it just wasn't doing it for me, landing at "unsettling" at best.

Final Thoughts:

Considering the linearity and repetitive nature of the game, I don't think I'll be up for another full run-through anytime soon, which is really a shame, since I expected to love this game and be replaying it for months to come. Buy at your own risk if it sounds good to you, but I would hold off for at least a couple of patches until the game is more stable.