henke on 3/3/2024 at 16:35
Might just do that!
Anyway,
I have reached the end of the road. Pacific Drive is done. 30 hours~ total playtime. I was saying earlier that it might outstay its welcome, but when I got to the late game I did keep putting off doing the final missions to just drive around and explore instead, so I guess I wasn't really ready to let go after all. The story in this game belongs to the NPC charcters who keep chattering in your ear, you're just the poor sap driving the car. It never really gets very interesting. The difficulty felt pretty good throughout, I did die a few times. I still feel like the balancing of the anomalies isn't right, they should be more sparse but more dangerous. My favourite unexpected feature was the quirk-fixing car mechanic bit, which could be the basis for a game of its own, but sadly there ends up being far too little of it, and too much of the more menial parts of car maintenance.
I played it on PS5, where the devs made the odd choice to target 4K - uncapped 30fps. I'm playing through a projector that just outputs 1080p so dunno if I'm getting a lot out of the 4K. Would much rather have 1080p and 60fps, thankyourverymuch. The game does have some quiet moments here and there where it suddenly runs in smooth 60fps and I'm sad it can't be like this all the time. This MIGHT make you think the PC version is the obvious way to go, but the new-gen consoles do have the benefit of the "instant resume" systems, which are especially beneficial in a game like this that might have long runs with no mid-run saving. That's right, if you're playing on PC, you'll have to commit to finishing a 30 min run each time you set out.
To wrap it all up: I think a lot of it could've been better, but I did enjoy the ride. So... thumbs up! 7.5/10 -ish
Most of all I'm just happy that a game like this exists. Jalopy had a lot of flaws as well, as has every game in this genre had, but I'm glad people keep trying to make it happen. I wanna make it happen too. We'll get there one day.