Driving around the Pacific Northwest in a beat-up station wagon might not sound like a typical videogame power fantasy, but Pacific Drive has quite a bit more up its sleeve. The run-based survival game, which first debuted at the PlayStation State of Play stream in September last year, has a new trailer out now that provides a better sense of what this STALKER-inspired road trip through the irradiated forests of the Olympic Exclusion Zone has in store for us later this year.
Pacific Drive is an upcoming PC game set in Washington’s Olympic peninsula, a landmass covered mostly in wilderness that sits across Puget Sound from Seattle. In Pacific Drive, it’s become a dangerous exclusion zone following a mysterious disaster caused by a secretive organisation called ARDA. Now it’s full of radiation and STALKER-inspired ‘anomalies’ that can take the form of hostile balls of scrap metal, menacing pillars of soil, and a massive weather phenomenon called the ‘Zone Storm’ that annihilates anything in its path.
Each run in Pacific Drive has you venturing out into the exclusion zone in your trusty station wagon, which provides some degree of protection from the hazards of the zone. Out there, you’ll find scraps, parts, and new materials to use back at your garage to repair and upgrade the car.
The zone changes each time you head out, though, and you’ll have to improvise: the station wagon can take a bit of a beating, but only so much. You’ll need to scrounge for parts from abandoned gas stations, vehicles, and whatever else you find out there.
You can’t sit still too long, though, because you’ll attract the attention of anomalies – and eventually, you’ll have to escape the destructive power of the zone storm itself.
Fortunately, you’ll be able to research customisations for your car that enhance its durability and allow it to get you into areas that had been inaccessible at first.
There’s a lot going on in the trailer: shades of Twin Peaks, Stranger Things, STALKER, Alan Wake, and maybe even a bit of Forza are all on display.
Developer Ironwood Studios says the Pacific Drive release date will be sometime this year, and you can head to Steam to pop it on your wishlist now. You might also want to check out some of the best racing games on PC to make sure your driving skills are up to speed.