There are a lot of survival games out there, and it can be difficult to figure out which ones are worth putting your time and money into. If you’ve got a PlayStation 5 and want ?a new challenge to dive into, we’ve got you covered. 

But what makes a survival game? Generally speaking, if you begin with very little and have to work your way up by gathering and crafting, then it can likely? be included as part of the survival genre. If you can build your own base and customize it to your own tastes, then even better. 

Here are ten survival games available to play on PlayStation 5 right now, and each of them is ?definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of the genre. 

Minecraft

As far as survival games go, Minecraft is a classic. You enter a pixelated world and have to work your way up from nothing but your fists. Gather resources to build a shelter and food to fill your stomach, and then you can go exploring in the cave systems under your blocky feet. One of the major plus points to Minecraft is?? Creative Mode, allowing you infinite resources to build glorious creations. 

The best thing about Minecraft is that it’s the perfect game to introduce a younger generation to the joy of survival? games, wit??h children everywhere loving the blocky world and everything in it. 

Rust

After waking up nak??ed on the beach with a rock, you’re tasked with surviving on servers filled with other players who are all only looking out for themselves. You then need to gather (or steal, if you’re feeling brave) resources that will allow you to build shelters, all while avoiding the hostile wildlife such as bears and wolves who will attack you without a second thought. 

To top off the survival experience of Rust, all servers get reset on the final Thursday of each month. This means that all of your bases, and all of your progress,??? is removed, and once again, you find yourself naked on the sand with only a rock.  

Ark: Survival Evolved

Have you ever wanted to tame dinosaurs and don them in mecha suits that turn them into war machines to use in survival against other players? Well, if that’s the case, then Ark: Survival Evolved might just be the survival game you’ve been looking for. You can play either single-player or multiplayer and form tribes ??with others on you?r server. 

It goes without saying that you begin your life in Ark: Survival Evolved with ?nothing, and you have to gather and craft your way up. Eventually, you can tame dinosaurs as mounts and take on mythi?cal creatures. You can even build mobile bases on the backs of some of the larger prehistoric beasties, giving you the ultimate RV. 

Subnautica

Subnautica is unlike any other game on this list because you have no land to stand on. Well, aside from the giant ship that you get to explore as part of the story and two islands you’ll get to eventually. You’ll need to gather blueprints, resources, and food in order to survive in the middle of an alien sea, surrounded by absolutely giant and very?? hostile alien creatures. 

There are multiple modes that you can enable while playing Subnautica, with Creative Mode disabling all depletable characteristics like health and thirst. On the other end of the spectrum, Hardcore Mode removes warnings of low oxygen levels and includes a gamer's worst fear �Permadeath. If you die, y?our save file will be gone forever. 

No Man’s Sky

No Man’s Sky got off ??to a rocky start when it was first released back in 2016, but it’s become a beloved title in the survival genre thanks to multiple game-changing updates. Now, it’s an example of everything a good survival game should be??. 

As a humanoid explorer of the planets, you wake up on a random planet with a crashed spaceship and only a multitool to help you navigate the? strange world. On the plus side, the multitool not only allows you to scan and gather resources but also acts as your first weapon if you encounter any alien creatures out to kill you. 

Grounded

Grounded is my personal idea of hell, and seems as though it took heavy inspiration from Honey I Shrunk the Kids. Shrunk down to the size of an ant and suddenly needing to survive in a world filled with giant insects, you’ll gradu?ally become more hungry and thirsty as?? time goes on, having to gather resources and water to survive. 

What’s worse is that Spiders are considered an “apex predatorâ€?in the world of Grounded, and as an arachnophobe, having a giant spider chase you across the backyard while you’re starving and dying is not my idea of a fun time. With that said, Grounded does have an arachnophobia mode, and I guess your enjoyment of this will depend on ??how much bugs give you the ick. ?;

The Forest

If surviving against insects isn’t your idea of a good time, then how about surviving in a world filled with cannibals who not only want to kill you but also rip the flesh from your bones? The Forest is the predecessor to Sons of the Forest, and if you play through The Forest and find it enjoyabl??e, I strongly suggest that you pick u?p the sequel as well. 

The best survival method for The Forest is to focus on building and exploring during the day, as the mutants with nefarious intentions come out in the dark of night. There’s a huge level of fear and anx??iety that you’ll feel when playing through this one, but it’s also hugely satisfying to survive and get through the story. 

Pacific Drive

If you’re looking for a survival game with a bit of a four-wheeled twist, then Pacific Drive is definitely the way to go. Using your trusty (if a little run-down) s?tation wagon, you can drive across the map to scavenge and gather resources to improve both your own chances of survival and the car itself. 

Your car is fully customizable, and you’ll need?? to focu??s on repairs and upgrades so that you can explore further and survive for longer. Anomalies around the map will affect you or the car in different ways, such as scrambling the controls for the car or inflicting damage, so be careful as you explore. 

This War of Mine

This War of Mine is the only survival game on this list that isn’t played through a first-person POV. Instead, you’re in control of a group of people who are hiding in a damaged house af??ter fleeing from a war. They can’t venture outside in the daylight, as there are snipers waiting to take them out, and you’re low on resources. 

Each controllable character has its own backstory, and you need to keep each of them alive as you wait for the ceasefire to?? come. However, there is no fixed timeframe for this event, so you’ll just need to keep going until it comes. This War of Mine is haunting and definitely something you should try if you’re into survival games. 

Green Hell

Green Hell can be pl?ayed in either single-player or co-op multiplayer mode and is an open-world survival game set in the Amazon Rainforest. As you likely expect by now, you’ll need to gather resources, build shelter, and find food in order to ??survive. 

If you choose to follow the story, which is entirely optional, th??en you’ll go off in search of your wife, who went missing after venturing out on a solo trip to a local tribal village. Unfortunately, your only contact with her is thr??ough the radio, and the local Yabahuaca tribe has not taken kindly to the presence of researchers in their jungle.

The post 10 Best PS5 Survival games appeared first on Destructoid.

Iron Studio has released an update for Pacific Drive that should help anyone who felt the Olymp??ic Exclusion Zone was a bit too unfriendly. The “Drive Your Way�update adds a slew of difficulty settings to fine-tune your experience, along with some other goodies.

Difficulty settings are always a good thing. Personally, I like playing at the default or mid-range settings (yes, even when reviewing a game), but I’m not going to fault someone for picking “I’m too young to die.�At the same? time, if you’re a “Nightmare�s??ort of person, then you can also lift the difficulty for a harder experience.

I’ll give you t??h?e list of difficulty options, and then I’ll talk some more about what else is in the patch. Here they are:

• Pacific Drive - The standard Pacific Drive experience - a Pacific Drive through the Olympic Peninsula.
• Scenic Tour - Crafting requirements, resource consumption, driving difficulty, hazards, dangers, storms, and damage are all lowered or disabled. The player cannot die. A scenic route through the story of Pacific Drive.
• Joyride - The same gameplay and tension as Pacific Drive, but gathering, crafting, and research requirements are all lowered. Damage and failure penalties are minimal.
• A Sunday Drive - Focus on the Olympic Peninsula with minimal interruptions
• Nuclear Journey - Every map will be filled with low dose radiation that is harmful to the player. Storms are faster and stronger, hazards and damage are more plentiful. An unpredictable, irradiated journey that only the car can protect you from.
• Mechanic's Road Trip - Terrain and the status of the car impact driving more. Items to repair the car are more costly to craft, and can't be crafted on a run. A challenging drive and susceptible car will provide a test of your forethought, problem solving, and automobile experience.
• Olympic Gauntlet - All aspects of the game are much harder - An extreme gauntlet to challenge the most dedicated Breachers.
• Iron Wagon - All aspects of the game are much harder, and failing a run will delete your save file. An extreme gauntlet to challenge the most dedicated Breachers, with no room for failure.

Beyond that, there are some new cosmetic options. This is mainly the ability to paint the wheels and bumpers. However, there’s a new ant??enna topper and dangly thing. If that’s not enough for you, a new cosmetic DLC pack is available on the storefront.

Lastly, you can now add custom songs on the PC version. This is probably the most exciting part for me �or would be if I was planning a replay. When I played through it for review, I kept getting the same five or six songs on repeat. They weren’t bad songs, but I hate listening to the same thing over and over because it drills into my head. The credits listed, like, a hundred songs, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear a lot of them because every time I flicked on the radio, it was “Doctor Juice.�/p>

There are a lot of people who love Pacific Drive, and I feel kind of isolated in the fact that I didn’t click with it. It’s enough that it’s one of those situations where I know everyone has their opinion, and that’s one of the few redeeming qualities of humans, but I’m so far away from some that I can’t help but ra?ise an eyebrow. It wasn’t the difficulty I ha??d a problem with, it just felt substantially padded and inconsistent. I dig the concept, and I love some of the things they did with it, but when I pulled up to the end credits, I was just so aggravated.

Anyway, try it yourself, you might like it. Pacific Drive is available for PC and PS5.?? The Drive Your Wa??y update releases today.

The post Sub??stantial Pacific Drive update brings new difficulty settings for a smoother ride appeared first on Destructoid.

When I previewed Pacific Drive, the standout moment for me was when, in a novice moment, I found myself driving through? the hellstorm of reality’s collapse. As my car fell apart around me and my heal??th was about to hit 0%, I managed to make it to the gateway and got shunted back to the safety of the garage.

It was intense. But, I thought, that was never going to happen again. I had learned a lesson, and it was unlikely I’d experience a moment so exciting in Pacific Drive.

I was wrong.

Further along in my playthrough, I once again opened the gateway to escape and triggered the collapse of reality. It was then I noticed that between myself and safety was a cliff ??that my car could not scale. I would need to take a huge detour in order to reach the destination, and I had already wasted too much time. Once again, I made it just before destruction and pulled into the garage with a charred and beaten station wagon and only a shred of life.

Unfortunately, it requires more than a battered vehicle to keep me interested, and that’s something Pacific Drive struggled with.

Pacific Drive (PC [reviewed], PS5)
Developer: Ironwood Studios
Publisher: Kepler Interactive
Released: February 22, 2024
MSRP: $29.99

In Pacific Drive, the Olympic Peninsula in Washington (state) has seen some bad science and has been sealed off from the outside world. A massive wall was erected around the zone, but you play as someone unlucky enough to get sucked in by way of weirdness. Thankfully, you? come across a station wagon that will help you survive. The bad news is that it’s actually a scientific freak show and will soon drive you crazy?? unless you find a way to detach from its influence.

The cause of this whole ordeal was a miracle creat?ion called LIM. LIM is a poorly def??ined phenomenon. What I think I understand about LIM is that it’s an energy that can re-write reality, so I guess I can see the benefits. However, an accident has resulted in it rewriting reality in the wrong way, and now the Olympic Peninsula is filled with angry garbage that wants to kill you.

Aiding you on your journey is a small group of disgraced scientists. There’s Ophelia Turn?er (Oppy), who maybe discovered LIM, Francis, the nervous wreck, and Tobias, the enthusiastic cryptid hunter. The whole lot of them are a joy, and they kind of pass the responsibility of babysitting you around, so you get to spend some time with each. The story may have some weaknesses, but the characters do not share them.

The Olympic Exclusion Zone started off as a walled-off area, which is now known as the Deep Zone. As the anomalies spread past that initial area, the zone grew twice more. Unfortunately,? your final destination sits in the Deep Zone, meaning you’ve got a long drive through two massive walls to get there.

Gameplay is broken into roguelite runs. Your scientist friends will give you a goal, and it’s your job to get yourself and your station wagon to those locations. Each run consists of a series of nodes that you hop between. You typically have to reach an open gate on one of these maps, which will allow you to choose the next destination on your route to your destination. At the end, you have to trigger a collapse in reality (a “storm�? and open a gateway that allows you to escape back to the safety of your garage. You then make necessary repairs and upgrades before setting out again.

It’s a well-handled gameplay loop. It pushes you to take risks, keeps you moving, and assures that each run will come with a risk of failure. You can choose to do gentle runs through safer territory to gat??her resources, but even then, you likely won’t come back unscathed.

One of the best things that Pacific Drive does is maintenance. You can fix the various parts of your car as much as you want, but they each have various ways to fail and will eventually just wear out entirely. Each quiet ?moment you have in the garage is spent inspecting your vehicle and ripping out its quirks to ensure it doesn’t fail you out on the road. When it does, it can often be a rush to patch gas leaks and keep the battery alive. Throughout the entire game, I never stopped havi??ng close calls, and that’s rather impressive.

However, the great maintenance systems have a few drawbacks, the biggest of which is hunting for resources. On your drives, you have to strip down abandoned cars, find useful ingredients growing in the wild, an??d loot containers in buildings for the in-betweens. It’s the last of those that is the biggest chore.

It’s just boring. The positions of resources are randomized. You might go out looking for chemicals to make repair putty and have to scour each and every science trailer to find some. You might get lucky and come back with a trunk full, or maybe you’ll be emptyhanded. Either way, it’s an onerous task of putting your car in park, getting out, sifting through an underwear drawer, getti?ng back in, and driving to the next building on your map. Slowly, constantly, endlessly.

Also, there are only, like, five buildings in the game copy-pasted everywhere. Random placement can’t save you ?from d?éjà vu.

It doesn’t help that the upgrade system is complete bu??tt. Going from crude panels and doors to steel is stra?ightforward enough, but it crawls from there. I didn’t have a better engine until late into the game, and at that point, I deemed the two upgrades that branch from there to not be worth it. Insulated panels have more strength than armored for some reason, and the device that lets you trade stored kLIM for functionless car décor isn’t even available until the last section of the game.

Finding the resources, collecting the LIM; it was never worth it. Pacific Drive seems like it wants you to prepare specific armor for each run. Something that is resistant to electricity, acid, or radiation, but no route seems to be free of some of that, so spending time on pla??nning feels like a frivolous waste. I got so much mileage out of insulated paneling. I only started trading out for different armor because I got tired of looking at the same stuff. I think the fact ?that I didn’t need half the tech tree speaks volumes.

I mentioned before, but while the scientists who aid you are all great, the story has some weaknesses. The major issue is that no one ?really knows? what’s going on. The characters continually throw speculation and theories back and forth, and I had trouble keeping up. By the end of the game, I was just doing what I was told. I no longer understood the significance of what I was doing.

There are definitely some great mo??ments within, but it all comes down to the characters themselves. The story starts feeling like a series of destinations rather than a full-flesh narrative.

I was also aggravated by the soundtrack. Not the stylistic make-up of it, or even the songs themselves, but the fact that, despite the long list of tracks I saw in the credits, I’d swear I just kept hearing the same five songs. Over and over and over. Every time the radio flicked on it was something like Forty Five says Six Six Six. I stopped turning it on, even though I feel like the radio is an important atmospheric addition in driving games. I just couldn’t take hearing Doctor Juice for the millionth damned time. I couldnâ€?™t stand it any longer.

The aggravation is a tremendous shame, because I legitimately did fall in love with my station wagon. Some time ago, there was discussion about the diegetic map in Far Cry 2. That is to say, the map existed as an object in the game world rather than being an ethereal menu that interrupts gameplay. Pacific Drive is all about that, and it’s great. Glancing over at the map in the passenger seat, checking the radiation meter on the dash, or even opening the trunk to access the inventory felt perfect. I l??oved grabbing an anchor, slamming it into the passenger seat, hopping in the dri?ver's side, throwing the car into drive, and getting the hell out of dodge.

And to its credit, Pacific Drive comes as close to getting everything right. There were a lot of great moments when I was cruising peacefully down a highway or dodging trees while my car bounced across the rough terrain. Moments where I chased down a pile of floating trash that snatched the scrapper from my hands. Moments where I sat and listened to drama between th??e excellent characters unf??old through my headset.

There’s a lot here that feels great, but it’s the inconsistency that lets it down??. All those great moments are padded by a framework that doesn’t do them enough justice. Too much emphasis on scrounging, an unfocused narrative, and a generally poor feeling of momentum and progression. I’m still certain that there are some who will be able to overlook the game’s flaws and latch onto its unique charm. However, I think just as many people are going to bounce right off it. Either way, it isn’t a comfortable ride.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Pacific Drive appeared first on Destructoid.

The February 2024 games list is an exciting ex??plosion of JRPG action and superhero fare. We'll also be surviving in a car from place to place in a much-anticipated indie.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink (PS4, PS5, PC)

Publisher: Cygames
Developer: Cygames
Price: $59.99
Release Date: February 1
Trailer

Granblue Fantasy: Relink kicks off February 2024 with an anticipated action-RPG. With a stunning watercolor-like look, Granblue Fantasy: Relink is based on the popular mobile game series, which also spawned an anime and a fighting game. The game features four-player co-op as you explore this stunning world.

According to the Steam listing, we'll be able to "choose from a diverse roster of skyfarers, each with their own unique weapons, skills, and combat styles." This action RPG plunges onto PlayStation and PC systems on February 1.

Persona 3 Reload (PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC)

Publisher: Sega
Developer: Atlus 
Price: $69.99
Release Date: February 2
Trailer

Another RPG arrives later on February 2 just after Persona 3 Reload. It's a complete remake of the PS2 classic, featuring an all-new UI, gorgeous graphical upgrade, and voice cast. Both the classic and the PSP reinterpretation have their pros and cons, but the Reload version seems to be the best way to play, despite lacking the fema??le protagonist from the ??portable entry.

Like Persona 5, you'll be taking on tasks around the town, hanging out with friends, and pursuing an evil force in Tartarus. "I really didn’t feel like an hour had passed by," said Timothy Monbleau in his Destructoid preview. "I felt so caught up in Persona 3 Reload’s gameplay that I? honestly thought I had twenty more minutes." Th?at's always a good sign.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC)

Publisher: Warner Bros. Games
Developer: Rocksteady
Price: $69.99
Release Date: February 2
Trailer

Publisher Warner Bros. Games arguably fumbled the release of Gotham Knights, and fans of Batman: Arkham City developer Rocksteady hope that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League succeeds. It may not be a single-player game, but the stor??y seems compelling. You play as the Suicide Squad, attempting to kill the Justice League,?? who have been turned evil by prominent DC villain Brainiac.

Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain ??Boomerang, and King Shark each have their own abilities to add to the mix. It's predominantly a third-person shooter as you explore the smashed-up city of Metropolis.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been the subject of scrutiny. First, the game was in development for quite a while, and has been delayed several times. Second, its live service model has left some scratching their heads. Lastly, the game has already had launch issues for the 72-hour early access players, w?ith saves acting as complete before they even begin the campaign.

Despite that, if the combat isn't repetitive and the story is intriguing enough, maybe Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League could still work out on February 2. Be wary of spoilers, however.

Pacific Drive (PS5, PC)

Publisher: Kepler Interactive
Developer: Ironwood Studios
Price: $29.99 (10% off for first week)
Release Date: February 22
Trailer

A surprise gem of the February 2024 games list could be Pacific Drive. In a stormy, post-apocalyptic world, you're journeying through? a scary landscape with many obstacles along the way. To help you and your car on this adventure, you'll be picking up resources and crafting objects for the car. The problem is that the most valuable resources are found in the more dangerous areas of the map, adding a risk-reward system.

"Every time you venture out, new trials await: bizarre weather, unforgiving landscapes, and experimental remnants," says the official Steam listing. You can take on this task when Pacific Drive launches on February 22.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (PS5)

Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix
Price: $69.99
Release Date: February 29
Trailer

Cloud's next adventure takes him into a stunning open world in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. As the second part of a trilogy, our heroes ventur??e towards Sephiroth as he's become a dangerous threat to the world. We'll be learning more about all of the p?arty members as the storyline features many twists and turns along the way.

You might want to hold off on a full replay of Remake before Rebirth, however. "Overall, it mostly felt like more Final Fantasy 7 Remake with a few additions I could take or leave," explained Timothy Monbleau in Destructoid's preview. "I honestly wouldn’t recommend replaying Remake leading up to Rebirth, since I think you’d burn yourself out with how similar they are."?? It launches on February 29.

Honorable mentions

February 2024 is an immensely packed month of games. Some of the omissions may have surpris??ed you. Here are the honorable mentions you might want to check out.

• Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash (PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Switch, PC) - February 2
• Foamstars (PS4, PS5 - will be available for free with PlayStation Plus day one) - February 6
• Helldivers 2 (PS5, PC) - February 8
• Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden (PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC)
• Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior (PC) - February 13
• News Tower (PC) - February 13
• Ultros (PS4, PS5, PC) - February 13
• Tomb Raider I-III Remastered (PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Switch, PC) - February 14
• PlateUp! (PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Switch) - February 15
• Mario vs. Donkey Kong (Switch) - February 16
• Skull and Bones (PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC) - February 16
• The Thaumaturge (PC) - February 20
• Nightingale (PC) - February 22
• Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake (PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC) - February 28
• Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster (PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Switch, PC) - February 28

The post Here are the most anticipated games of Febr???uary 2024 appeared first on Destructoid.

It’s a little less than a month until Pacific Drive rolls out into the world. To get you ready for the game, Ironwood Studios has released a video that covers the core gameplay.

It isn’t hard to understand the basics of Pacific Drive, but there are a lot of deeper systems to keep in mind. For example, gathering anchor energy is important, but you might not realize how important it really is until you’re caught in an area with reality collapsing ??around you. So, you can learn from your mistakes like I did, or you can w??atch this video.

Having played Pacific Drive, I can tell you that this 10-minute video is pretty all-encompassing, covering car maintenance, survival, scavenging, and upgrading. If you’re not sure what the game is going to play like, this will tell you what it is and what it isn’t. Also, look at it this way, it will allow you ?to glide through the tutorial parts pretty easily.

I previewed Pacific Drive a while back, and while I have some reservations, my time with it left me excited to get my hands on the full experience. There’s a lot of elements of what I love mixed in there, an?d I’m wondering how well they’ll fare when stretched out to a full experience. I’m worried that the core gameplay loop will become repetitive, so I’m hoping to see a lot of surprises scattered about as you proceed further into the zone.

Pacific Drive is out on February 22, 2024 for PS4 and PC.

The post This Pacific Drive ‘Surviving the Zone’ video gives a deep 10 minute primer appeared first on Destructoid.

I talk about this all the time, but I’ve long been searching for the perfect road trip game. Something that captures the calmness of a long drive and the vibes of a late-night Waffle House. One day. One day�/p>

It’s that search that got me interested in Pacific Drive. Okay, it’s sort of like driving a jalopy through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, as shown in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but there’s still room for Waffle House vibes. Having played a bit of it, I’m going to have to say that I’m probably going to still be left searching, but that’s not to say that Pacific Drive doesn’t have some interesting things going for it.

Pacific Drive has you transporting a package near the Olympic Penninsula where a promising technology was being experimented with. However, things started going wrong and getting weird, so the government walled up the area, establishing the Olympic Exclusion Zone. Then things just got worse, so they pulled everyone they could out of there and sealed the exits. That shouldn’t matter to a delivery person like ??you, but while taking a short detour, you’re sucked?? into the zone.

Once inside, you’re exposed to the area’s weirdness. Things float in midair, pockets of energy sap the life out of you, and everything just seems unstable. Trying to escape, you find a station wagon, and imm??????????????????????????ediately after you're contacted by a pair of scientists who still reside in?? the zone. They tell you the car is not normal either. There hasn’t been a working vehicle in the zone for some time, and you’re most likely driving an entity known as a remnant.

That’s kind of your lot. In the parts of Pacific Drive I played, you generally love on your station wagon while scientists force you into dangerous experiments. You’re told that the remnant takes different forms, but whoever finds it inevitably falls in love with it until they go insane. It’s a pretty convincing? setup since the car is the game’s central mechanic, so you’ve got little agency beyond caring for it.

Th??e demo do?esn’t go much deeper into the narrative than that. Your goal is to continually improve your car while scientists tell you what to do.

The gameplay loop involves working on your car in the garage, pi??cking a route, and then trying to survive to your destination while looting along the way. Each journey is separated into smaller open-world nodes that are randomly generated. These are pockets of stability. Everywhere else is constantly in flux, with matter being unable to maintain its shape, but these areas are relatively safe�for now.

To traverse these areas, you either need to navigate to an open gate, or you? can make one yourself using LIM taken from anchors around the map. Once you have enough LIM, you can trigger a collapse in the area’s stability and flee back to the garage through a column of energy.

However, it’s very important that you loot as much as possible. You can dismantle car wrecks, clear out houses, or rob abandoned gas stations, but you’ll need as much as you can get your hands on to upgrade your car. While doing this, you need to be careful because while I didn’t encounter any entities that were distinctly aggressive, the environment is always hazardous. Mannequins that litter the road will explode,?? pillars of rock will rise from the ground and launch you into the air, and weird balls of garbage will grapple onto your car and drag it into the wilderness.

All ??of this is part of a random generation, so these aren’t scripted encounters. It leads to a unique lack of trust in the environment. You’re constantly watching the readings on your instruments and keeping your head on a swivel as you watch for hazards that could complicate your journey.

I may have over-looted, but Pacific Drive didn’t really try to stop me. I had to park my car in front of every house that I could to allow myself to rifle through the underwear draw??er for scrap. Not that being extra prepared didn’t have its benefits, but, in retrospect, I feel like I might have been inefficient. I think that may have slowed things down too far.

At times, Pacific Drive began to feel like many other open-world games. This meant the game didn’t really feel much like a drive and more like pus??hing a grocery cart between dumpsters. It was like The Long Dark or, more uncharitably, a Ubisoft title, where every structure I entered had to be emptied into my pockets for gear that I may never, ever need. I think maybe if I just spent more time looking for what I needed, I may have gotten my empty stretches of weirdly hostile road.

On the opposite end of that, however, are the storms. If you spend too much time on a node, your map will begin to be overwhelmed by a big circular barrier, yellow at first, before being followed by red. Storms set in, initially making things more dangerous before wearing through your car protection and eventually killing you. You have to make your escape before that happens, which leads to panicked drives as reality disintegrates around yo?u. One of my most memorable moments was weaving through the forests and rolling into a gateway at around 2% health and escaping by the hair on my neck.

I mostly enjoyed my time with Pacific Drive, but I'm concerned that the ?unique aspects of it might get drowned out by trite looting and crafting that we’ve seen too many times before. Upgrading your car is fun, but if that aspect outweighs the actual driving, then I think it will cheapen the entire experience. 

Nonetheless, I’m excited to get my hands on more of Pacific Drive. In preparation for this write-up, I fired the demo up again to refresh myself on the narrative details of the introduction, and I had trouble putting it down again. There is a lot that it does well, and it’s clear to see where its heart l??ies. Maintaining the station wagon is really enjoyable, I just hope we’re doing the bulk of that out on the road rather than in the garage.

Pacific Drive is out on February 22, 2024 for PS4 and PC.

The post Pacific Drive is a? harrowing road trip on the edge ??of reality appeared first on Destructoid.

Can you survive the road to hell?

We've seen lots of driving games over the years, but for the most part, their gameplay focuses on racing, demolition derbies, or navigating a large open world map. Pacific Drive is a new run-based, first-person driving survival game, the debut title from Seattle-based Ironwood Studios. The developers behind this new project have worked on classics like Ratchet & Clank, Mortal Kombat, Call of Duty, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and many more. Pacific Drive was revealed today during the PlayStation State of Play, and featured a heart-p?ounding drive through dark, desolate woods. It seems there ?is a mystery afoot, and the only way to figure it out is to drive towards it.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN1I_znpzrk

"Your car is your only companion as you navigate a surreal and anomaly-filled reimagining of the Pacific Northwest," says the description on the game's official website. "Structured as a 'road-like,' each excursion i?nto the wilderness brings unique and strange challenges, as you restore and upgrade your car from an abandoned garage that acts as your home base. With the car as your lifeline, you’ll unravel a long-forgotten mystery as you make your way to the heart of the Olympic Exclusion Zone."

While much of Pacific Drive remains a mystery, I have to admit that this is one of the most unique premises I've seen at these game showcases as of late. Government secrets, spooky monsters, and some kind of supernatural weather phenomenon? Looks like a recipe for a classic, edge-of-your-seat adventure. I'm usually pretty bad at driving mechanics in games, so I think I'll probably need to brush up a bit before Pacific Drive finally releases.

Pacific Drive will be coming t??o PlayStation 5 and PC sometime in 2023. Until then, I'll be on the lookout for any more updates, because this is certainly one I'll be looki??ng forward to.

The post Ride into the?? unknown with driving ?survival game Pacific Drive appeared first on Destructoid.