Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] Pacific Drive - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

Video Games Hosts Paul, Ryan and Josh are getting in our station wagons, forgetting to shift into drive and deep diving the recent video game release of Pacific Drive! This interesting video game mixes driving, survival and one sweet ride… but does it work and is it fun? Not always as you’ll find out in this awesome gaming filled episode!  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Gaius214, YayaArizona, Disratory, Jwaf and AceofShame Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com. Hello, fellow gamers! Welcome to the Pacific Northwest. Don't worry about the metal monsters lightning storms and mummified tourists everywhere just get into this station wagon and everything will be okay we are the video gamers podcast hosted by three lifelong gamers who are also dads and today we are deep diving pacific drive i am your host paul and joining me he's desperate for

more chemicals like tyrone Biggums. Y'all got any more of them chemicals? It's Josh. Y'all got any more of that repair putty? I know, right? There's never enough repair putty. Ever. All right.

And then joining Josh and me, he's dodging bunnies left and right so they don't latch onto his car like sentinels in the Matrix. It's Ryan. I am ready ready let's go oh wait i'm not in gear hold on hold on you're in park going nowhere fast yep oh boy all right we're gonna be talking about pacific drive but first we have a little bit of housekeeping to do josh i think we've got a community not a community review but a show review you're gonna read we have a couple honestly the reviews have been pouring in so

number one kudos to all of you wonderful amazing listeners out there for doing your part and supporting the show i every morning when i see a new review i just i get a little a little pep in my step there's a little joy in my heart you know, uh, and then I share it with you guys and that makes us all smile. And then, you know what? Good chance. We're going to read some of them on the show as well. Uh, if you haven't left us a review yet, it takes like 30 seconds. You're doing your part for, for, for humanity, for spreading the joy of this podcast through the world. And, uh, and you know, just, just do it.

All right. This first one comes in from Shory. Oh seven. It's titled games, friends, and good vibes. And it says just three dudes who make you feel like you've all been best friends forever. Talking the latest in gaming news,

reviewing new releases, and just overall great banter. They deep dive random games and even have a feature for fans to choose a host to play and review any game of their choosing, which makes for some pretty awesome content. Top 100 game ranks from each host that they update with new releases and deep dives. Perfect audio quality,

consistent schedule, and a great follow on Twitter slash X. Listen to one episode of these guys and you'll be hooked oh that's so sweet thank you shorry that that might actually take the cake for one of my favorite reviews over like the past year that one's good i will say the consistent schedule part is nothing to do with me just letting everybody know one of us might have been a little bit late to start recording this oh it's, it was a couple minutes. Come on. At what point do we tell Shori that I've severely fallen behind on the leaderboard?

I think I'm like three games behind. It's hard when it gets to be that big, man. I know. Yeah. Tell me about it. Also, quit slacking, Paul. All right. This next one comes in from TimmyG1587, and it's titled, I mean, they're okay. And it says, so I started listening a couple months ago.

I listen every single week. I joined the Discord, which has an awesome community. There's value there. Positive outlook while still having a critical eye on games from all corners of the development world. They try to interact with everybody in their awesome community and appreciate what they add to the space. See ya.

I guess the show's alright. Aww. Thanks, Timmy. We think you're alright, too. Yeah, you're pretty okay yourself, buddy. By the way, our community's doing all our work for us. They're telling people about Discord. They're telling them about Patreon. I love it. We've done it, boys.

We don't have to beg anymore. Honestly, that should just go to show you that we legitimately have the best gaming community I have ever seen. There is zero toxicity. There is zero console warring. There is zero putting people down because of the games they like. This is like a unicorn, man, in the gaming world. It really is. And I know we say it all the time, but it's just this thing where it's like, we have found the oasis of awesome gamers that are actually really cool to each other. And we want you to be a part of it. It's dude we found it come come join us yeah it really is a great community there's a link for our discord in the episode make sure to check that out and then

one last thing before we jump into pacific drive ryan why don't you tell the people a little bit more about our patreon yeah so in addition to uh the discord and other ways you know just listening to the show which we absolutely love and writing reviews we have a patreon um believe it or not podcasts aren't free to run so all of your uh support helps us greatly multiplayer squad.com you can sign up for as low as five bucks a month to get started um you get a lot of awesome perks you get uh early access to episodes you get bonus two bonus episodes a month for the Squadcast. Tons of Discord perks. So a lot of cool stuff.

And then more than anything else, you help support the show, help keep us running. So again, MultiplayerSquad.com. We'd love to have your support, and we thank you in advance. Oh, absolutely. We thank people in advance. We also give them shout outs on the show when they sign up and we have two people that we owe thank yous to. We want to say thank you to Kyle McCourt, who signed up on Patreon and also Moose. Both of them signed up with rare status.

We want to say thank you so much to Kyle and Moose for their support. Thank you. All right. I think it's time, guys let's uh shift into drive and talk about pacific drive all right every time we do a deep dive here we start out by reading a description of the game here's what they have on steam face the supernatural dangers of the olympic exclusion zone with a car as your only lifeline in this driving survival adventure. Scavenge resources, load up your trusty station wagon, and drive like hell to make it all through alive. All right, so Pacific Drive. We've got some history here, right, Josh? We've been talking about this game for over a year. We've talked about the development. We've covered when the

first video footage released, when the demo released i went back to one of our old episodes when michael was on the show with us to hear what we had to say about pacific drive over a year ago michael was so excited he said he was looking forward to pacific drive more than diablo 4 which was yeah sounded like blasphemy at the time and almost seems worse now in hindsight. But that's a little bit of an insight as to how excited some of us were about it. Yeah. I mean, Michael tend to get really excited about a lot, just about everything that you could talk to him about with games. But yeah, I mean, I still remember the first time we watched the trailer for this game

and it showed all of this, like these anomalies that you would come across. Like the world has been distorted. There's this weird kind of eeriness to it, but then there's this like weird, serene driving in your station wagon through the beautiful Pacific Northwest. And we were like, dude,

what is this game? And then they kind of marketed it as like a survival game, but with a car and there's crafting and exploration. And there's this like, you know, story to discover. And it really just touched on all of the things that we like to hear. And then they just kind of disappeared for a little while until the demo came out for Steam Next Fest just recently. I mean, that came out like a month before they released the game. But yeah, I remember us seeing this trailer being very, very excited for the possibilities for this one. Apparently, I was a little salty on that episode because you, Josh, said, yeah, I'm kind of with Michael on this one after he really gushed about

it. And then you said paul i know that you called us both crazy because you wanted to talk about resident evil 4 but then apparently you know the two of you outvoted me and we were talking about pacific drive instead but oh man this is a long time coming we have talked so much about pacific drive now that we kind of read the description talked a little bit about how the game looks like, Josh, why don't you actually walk us through the gameplay? What are you actually doing in Pacific Drive? What are the nuts and bolts? So that was a good pun there too, Paul. So the nuts and bolts are, I can't let a good pun go by unnoticed. That was so funny. Yeah. The nuts and bolts of this game are you have this you get put into this like exclusion zone area

there's been this limb technology that's been discovered but something has gone awry and it is distorting reality and so you are now in this place that you should not be there's some scientists that apparently still live in this place that basically discover that you're there and they're trying to help you out. And you're just an innocent bystander who was delivering a package. And now you're in this crazy sci-fi world with things happening that you don't understand. And all you want to do is you just want to go home. And so that's like the basic premise of like the plot of the game. Gameplay wise, you are in your station wagon, which is your form of transportation, but oddly becomes like your companion in this game as well. You go out into these zones and

you are basically foraging for supplies. Sometimes you'll have a mission that one of these scientist people give you to say, hey, if you want to get out of here, you need to go to this place and activate these towers so that we can trace your signal or some sci-fi mumbo jumbo. You go out in those zones, you drive around, you get out of your car, you scavenge, and you activate, you get these big balls called anchor points. Don't you laugh at me, Paul. Okay,hrasing, but go ahead. So you get these family shows and you, uh, you use those to kind of charge your car. And then that opens up a gateway that then teleports you back to the garage. And the garage is the area where you do all the upgrades to your car and like crafting and things like that. And so that in a nutshell is the gameplay loop. Yeah. I think the only thing

I would add on top of that is it does have a little bit of this roguelike structure to the game where you go out on runs and then you either portal your way back to the initial garage or if you die or your car is in one run you'll be able to work your way through all the zones and escape back to normal life um is that fair ryan anything that we missed as far as like core gameplay mechanics no i think that's pretty fair the the big thing and i know that's been a big issue with a lot of people too is is with that roguelike nature you die when you're out there you lost everything so you you can't stop and save you can't do any of that stuff so you have to go back to the garage to be able to do that and that's you know one of the big hang-ups a lot of people are having but um it's definitely one of the the key features of i guess you know a roguelike so it's the nature of the beast yeah yeah i'd say it's like a roguelike light in that

because you want when you unlock these zones in the maps like those you keep those unlocked and i mean some of the maps are procedurally generated um but you know anything any progression you get is like remains and you store all your stuff in the garage and that you don't lose but if you are on a drive and i have scavenged a bunch of stuff and i died like yes all that stuff is gone at that point so it's not as brutal as roguelike would normally be where it's like hey your run is just completely over start all over again i feel like there's a lot more of like the permanent progression systems than you would get in like a permanent roguelike that's fair fair. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. And there's also a large aspect of while you're scavenging materials on the road,

you're also fixing your car because it's going to take damage and your car's health matters more than your person's health. And so keeping your car afloat until you get back to the garage, and then that's when you're doing your major upgrades and things like that. I think it's actually a really cool and ingenious idea i love the idea of being able to upgrade your car and go out and do these missions and unlocking new parts of the map i think that stuff works really well i i will say just kind of like right off the bat here i really struggled with this game yeah um i a lot of times we try to keep our opinions to ourselves and we don't really talk until we record the show.

This game did not jive with me at all. In the episode from last year, I kind of asked you guys like, what would make Pacific Drive good or bad or how do you think it's going to shake out? And Michael said, it could be a complete waste of time. Okay, great idea,

but poor execution or a game where I keep going back to that well for the next 20 years. I will certainly not be returning to this game in 2044. I can promise you that. However, all that being said, I will be completely fair. I think there are some great ideas in Pacific Drive. I think it has definitely found its niche audience. I don't think this is necessarily a broad game that's going to appeal to everyone. But as we talk about the game here, I think it'll help a lot of our listeners identify whether or not it's going to jive for them. All right, so let's talk about kind of like the opening moments of the game. So when you first fire up the game, you're driving your normal car on the highway. You end up being sucked into a portal and they start teaching you kind of like all the basics of the game. Here's how you turn on your car's lights. Here's how you turn on your windshield wipers, which by the way, are not all that terribly useful. And then once you go through that portal,

you are stuck running on foot. And this is when you run across the station wagon that you're going to have for the rest of the game. There is a radio where some people start talking to you and they say it's not a transmitter. They can't send anything back, but they can hear us. And they start guiding you in your station wagon that you have found. And then you work your way

to a garage, which is your home base of operations for the whole game. There's a woman named Oppie who talks to you through the intercom, tells you you can use her equipment. You can check the status of your car, fuel up, install some gear. And then they start to hit you with some of the lore and the story of the game. they say that you're a breacher that you're in possession of a remnant which has taken the shape of the car i really struggled following the lore of this game in part because every time they're narrating story to you you're also driving and trying to avoid obstacles and for me it was very hard to multitask those at the same time. Despite playing so much of this game,

can either of you two understand and explain the lore of remnants and the mass hallucinations and all the stuff that they talk about? Not it, Ryan. Ryan? I didn't catch it at all. I have no idea. I have no idea what happens in this game like i don't know if you

guys knew this but i am a certified limb scientist okay so an unstable one maybe basically this lady oppie is the one is the scientist that discovered limb technology now i have no idea what limb stands for but you know let's just put that aside for now. This limb technology was supposed to change the world. And instead what happened is it created this weird chaos and alternate reality and caused all of these issues that you see in the game. So when Paul talks about avoiding obstacles, we're not talking like construction signs in the road or cones or things like that. We're talking about weird entities that will hook onto your car and try to drag it away or weird razor blades that will come up out of the ground and just go shooting off in the distance and things like

that like there's there's some strange stuff happening and then you have these two guys i'll be honest i don't even remember their name tobias and something else or whatever that are kind of like francis yeah francis there you go and then later alan comes into the mix but go ahead yeah I'll be honest, I don't even remember their name, Tobias and something else or whatever that are kind of like- Yeah, Francis. There you go. And then later, Alan comes into the mix, but go ahead. Yeah. And these are the guys that are really fascinated with the fact that your car apparently is special and it's called a remnant. And this remnant is some kind of weird energy thing that is in this zone.

The downside is that anytime a remnant becomes attached to a human, it drives that human insane. And so their goal is to try to save your life by getting you out of this zone before you go crazy, which is really weird because your car is your lifeline in this game. And I'll be honest, I kind of became a little bit attached to my car. And I get that. And I've seen that from other people. And then it's like, well, this thing's not driving me crazy. It loves me and I love it, you know, but. Oh, it drove me crazy. Oh, it drove me crazy too. So yeah. So then, like I said earlier, the whole point is that you're trying to get out of this zone and to do that, you have to go really deep into the zone to get to the area that you need

to get to so that you can get out of the zone and go home. And that's the whole, like, that's your progression in this game. That's the reason you're doing what you're doing. And now we're all limb technology experts, guys. Made total sense, right? Yeah, I heard a lot of gameplay. Not so much story there, but thank you, Josh. You understood it, I think, better than me and Ryan.

This game has a story? Oh, wait. Don't forget the anchor points and the stability zones because the anchor points, which are the giant balls that I said not so well, are the things that keep reality kind of constant in those areas until you yank one of those away and then things go haywire too. Yeah, absolutely.

I did have one point where I grabbed an anchor point and then you talked about the bunny. I looked back and then I just saw my car just go whoosh. And it just got shot across like 150 yards away or meters or whatever. And I had to go run and grab it. You know, it's, ah, it's, it's crazy in the zone. Oh yeah. A lot of chaos happens for sure. All right. so basically, since you're trying to work your way out of the zones, and they do tell you that this has happened to other people, but no one has survived.

And so your goal is to be the first one to make it out. And there's a lot of different routes of progression in this game that we can kind of divide. The one that I wanna talk about first is using the route planner at your garage and how over time you make progression by unlocking new areas on your map that are all interconnected. And you're kind of working your way to get further and further away from the garage so that you can work your way out. So there's like multiple zones. You start in the outer zone, you have to cross into the mid

zone and, you know, it kind of just progresses from there. So the way this works is that you're in your garage and you can click on the route planner and it brings up a map and you can see where you can travel. It tells you some information about what might be there, what anomalies you might see, what resources might be there. And you click on it of where you're going to head. Now, if you're trying to travel far enough away, you're going to have to go through multiple junctions because your car can only travel so far. And so once you select where you want to work your way to, then the garage door opens, you hop in your car and you start driving. Now the, the different junctions, and this is going to take a while to explain because this game is pretty complicated um for example let's say you can travel to junction i don't know g9 and it's like right next to the garage so the very first time you go there

you travel to g9 you can collect some mats and then you have to go grab one of these stability anchors and then you unlock a portal you drive through the portal it sends you back to the garage but now g9 has opened a new connection to E7, which is further north and further to the west. So now I can go to my route planner, set it for E7, but now they're going to force me to go back to G9, work my way through. Now there's an exit point that I can drive through and it connects to you know e7 or whatever so kind of the whole point of this game is as you're trying to drive to travel further you are retreading the old junction areas to grab new mats and this sounds pretty complicated because it is and the good

news is that the game just explains it about as well as i just explained it to our listeners because josh you even posted like hey just so you guys know like here's what you have to do and then we're like yeah like we kind of figured it out and the game does teach you how to do things in it but they only tell you once and this game is so unique they kind of should tell you multiple times so you don't really know what you're doing in this game until you've played about five to six hours and everything finally clicks. So wait a minute, let me get this straight. Routes, junctions, zones, gates, closed exits, stable exits,

stable zones, gateway. Did I say gateways already? Yeah. When you go to to a zone you can't leave that zone but when you leave that zone it opens up more zones so that you can then go to those zones but you can't leave those zones then until you go to them and then leave them and then that opens up more zones yeah right yeah i mean what's wrong with that paul as long as your car is healthy too oh and the whole time you're exploring these zones wait is it a junction or a zone it's a junction junction conjunction junction what's your function right yeah so so when you're exploring these junctions they're all individually procedurally generated maps that can actually be fairly large even though you don't know where you're going or can't find your way around you're just driving around until you can get out of there right but why am i there

in the first place if i'm trying to just get out of that zone well you gotta unlock new junctions on your map josh so you can get to the next zone oh but but but that unlocks the route that i can then use from a junction to go to the next. Yes, but you have to first portal and then return and then take an exit for your next junction. But through a gateway, but only stable gateways, right? Not stable exits because there's exits in the zone as well, but not those. Right. Gateways and exits are not the same. Why didn't they just tell us that, guys?

We're smart. We could figure this out. I'm so glad the game explained this just brilliantly, just like you guys did. I think I'm more confused now than playing the game. No, in all seriousness, though, I will say, I think it's actually a really clever way to progress the map. They basically just force you, go explore this new area,

take a portal back back now go back to it again see how the maps changed and now you can drive on to a new junction that i actually do think is a very neat idea now for better or worse this does mean you are traveling in the early junctions a million times over the course of this game and the first couple times that i went to these areas i was scrapping everything i could oh there's a building i gotta go check it out oh on on the mini map there's a point of interest i better go there and then like six hours into this game i'm just beelining it for the exits i'm trying to drive down mountains slamming into trees anything i can do to get out of here quicker.

And that kind of tells you my mentality of playing this game. I found stopping to smell the roses was so much fun for the first hour. And then after that, I'm like, just get me out of Junction G9. I just got to move on. It's wild how fast that dissipates. Like, I was a big advocate for this game i was shouting from the rooftops i was so excited i know with uh our boy al a new a new uh listener to the show and um i we were talking about it and after like you said about an hour you just that just all is gone you know all

of the wonder and the majesty of the cool Pacific Northwest is just gone. And then you're like, how the heck do I get out of this area so I can get back to the garage so I can go to the next zone or junction or whatever the heck it is and continue on on this game might differ a little bit but when i started to realize that i have to go through these zones every single time i want to go to a zone that's further away i really started to like nails on the chalkboard in my brain about like i've discovered this new zone why can't i just go there like fast travel me there at this point and the game's like oh no no you got to go through the first junction me there at this point and the game's like oh no no you got to go through the first junction then you got to go through the second junction but don't worry guys occasionally there's a highway that's there that will let you skip one junction but then you

have to actually just drive through this highway for a little while and that's when I was like to me this felt like artificial inflation Like don't make your game longer just because you need to feel like you made it longer. If your game is a good experience, I don't need you to tack on an extra five hours of repetition to make me feel like I got my money's worth. I will gladly pay the $30 that this game costs to give me a better experience. But I think as gamers, we know when somebody is just fluffing a playtime. And that's exactly what this felt like to me, is there was zero reason to make us redrive through all of these initial beginning junctions so that I could then get to the second junction. And the problem is, is that sometimes

you're talking about five to seven junctions later that you're having to get to when you get towards the end game. And you would think, well, I'm near the end game. Can I just warp there? I mean, I could warp back to the garage. The technology exists, right? And it's like, nope, nope. You got to drive through this same zone you've driven through a hundred times and again these zones are large and they're procedurally generated so this road may not be a straight shot it might be a huge snaking loop that goes up a mountain and then down and around and all this stuff and it's like i'm with paul on this one man i just got to where it was like dude i don't care if I launch this freaking car off this mountain. It'll get me out of this place faster.

Yeah. And not to belabor this point too long. I will say that every once in a while, like when you're crossing into the mid zone, you start driving through things that you haven't seen before. And that actually got really exciting because they've lulled you to sleep with the last four hours of content but now i get to see something new and i'm driving through these corridors that are underground and i'm working my way through this wall you know so so they do occasionally hit you with new stuff but by and large it does definitely get a bit repetitive um let's go ahead and take a short break and then we'll be right back all right so talking about pacific drive let's talk about the actual experience of driving all right so we talked a little bit about map

progression when you're actually in the car driving through these procedurally generated areas what or maybe maybe walk back to the first couple of drives you did. How did you feel and how did it play? I felt amazing. I thought it played amazing. I thought that there was a little bit of weight to the car. I thought that it felt a little heavy, but it felt reactionary as far as how you steered and stuff like that. That all quickly went away every time i tried to get out and i i had to look to the side and then click and then click again and then click oh oh no and i closed the door back on myself and then i oh oh there we go now i get out and then i realized oh whoops i

didn't put my car in park and my car's rolling down the hill and i gotta run back down and go grab my car get back in the car put it back in park then i can get back out again and uh and then i can go explore so so that's that's kind of the whole driving uh era for me little repetitious because if you want to save battery power not only that you're also turning off wipers turning off your lights turn off the engine go into park get out of my car and then every time you get back in you got to turn all those things back on every every stinking time see i this is my favorite part of the game like in all in all honesty is the i know but there's something about driving this car through the pacific northwest which i i we we had a little bit of an argument before we started

recording, but I think this game is atmospherically beautiful. I mean, sometimes there's weather. Actually, a lot of times there's weather. So it might be raining. It might be foggy. Maybe it's nighttime. Maybe the sun is rising. But I mean, it's the Pacific Northwest. It's absolutely beautiful. I'm driving down this abandoned highway. It's foggy. The sun is rising. So there's this beautiful orange glow i've got my radio on and i i'll tell you what man the music in this game is freaking top notch dude i sat in the garage i found a radio station in the garage that i was just absolutely jamming to i need to go back and actually like shazam all these songs because they are

incredible so it's like i'm just cruising down the highway listening to my music oh is that a little bit of rain let me let me look over and turn my wipers on and they actually clean your windshield for you and i'm just chilling and i'm like dude this is peaceful as anything man oh watch out for that anomaly oh no my car is flipping but then you know so i actually really did enjoy the driving portion of this game now again that again, that kind of goes back to, I don't want to drive through the same zone 100 times, but I actually really enjoyed the being in the car and moving around part of it.

All right. So hysterically, my biggest beef with this game is the driving because this is the anti-GTA. In GTA, you can drive, you can go nuts, you can go fast, you can do all these wild things. When you're playing Pacific Drive, in the procedural generation, you have to follow the roads because these cars do not perform well on gravel or on inclines,

especially the starting engine. You can't even handle a 10-degree angle, it seems. It starts beeping at you, and you can't even handle a 10 degree angle. It seems it starts beeping at you and you can't do it. So you're stuck more or less driving on the main roads, but every 40 feet, they hit you with barrels in the road, concrete barriers, or the anomalies.

And none of them are hard to avoid. They're just annoying. So as soon as my car gets up to speed, I'm slamming on the brake. I'm slowly driving off road so I don't crash into something with my headlights getting damaged. And I go back on the road and then I speed up for eight seconds to immediately slow down and drive around something else. Now, the first time you see each anomaly, it's fun. But once you are traveling through this junction for the 20th time, and it's very easy to avoid the abductor anomalies and stuff like that, I just found it to be, I'm just trying to drive, and every eight seconds, you're giving me something that annoys me. And i did not find it fun to just drive through the world or to do any

kind of real exploration uh another example of that i know that we haven't really talked about getting out of your car but on these runs you very quickly notice how much of the game is just repetitious like if you need to go find chemicals which we were always hurting for all of a sudden i realized oh it's every building with the satellite dish has a hazmat cabinet yeah so now i just know to bypass every other kind of trailer out there in the world but if i go into that one every time i gotta bring my crowbar there's the cabinet there's my chemicals there's always gonna be these floodlights that'll give me bulbs and then on the back side there's lead plating and then in the

middle there's always one to three pcs that i can break down for electronic parts and i very quickly realized oh this is a game that's largely copy pasted through the procedural generation in a way that i found to be a little underwhelming personally i'm with you on that part i the there's like three different house designs total in this game i mean literally and you do need to get out and you do need to scavenge a lot because there is a lot of crafting that you have to do in this game to upgrade your car so that you can make it towards the middle and end game in this and dude the 50th time i pulled up to the exact same model trailer that has the exact same layout on it and has the exact same

backpack that is exactly what i was gonna say there's a free fabric there's a cooler there's a chest and maybe there's that science cabinet uh and that's it and i mean it you it really is a little jarring to just go dude you couldn't make a few more models of this or maybe like i can find something random from time to time. I mean, I think the most random thing I found was a paint color that I could paint on my car. And the first time I found one, it was like a hallelujah moment. Cause I was like, it's something new guys. But yeah, I mean that that part, again, is very repetitious, and it gets really frustrating after a while. Oh, definitely.

I was the same way. You go through these areas, and it's just the same thing over and over again. And like you guys said, I want to enjoy this environment and in this area because it was cool. The songs were awesome i'm sitting there vibing but every 14 seconds i gotta now i gotta go off the road and do all this same thing with uh uh something new the the biggest thing i had was i saw in the beginning i saw a charging station and i'm like oh there's a building on my map and i go and i look at it i'm like wait what is this i haven't seen one of these before i'm like oh my, there's a building on my map. And I go and I look at it. I'm like, wait, what is this? I haven't seen one of these before.

I'm like, oh, my gosh. I remember Jackson was sitting right next to me. I'm like, dude, look. I was like, oh, it's a charging station. Okay. And I drove in and it put a little barrier and charged us up. And I'm like, whoa, that was so cool. But it took 50 other generic basic buildings before I got to that one thing that was different.

Yeah. I really do feel like you get lulled to sleep so when you get something moderately cool it just seems all the cooler yeah yeah all right so we got to move on and talk a little bit about anomalies because that's such a large part of the game we've already mentioned a few how about you guys just pick like one or two that you think are neat or maybe your favorite or maybe the most annoying and kind of just tell the people about how it works um the abductor is one of the very first anomalies that you come across and it i i remember being terrified of this thing so i was like what the heck is this thing gonna do is it gonna is it gonna abduct me is it gonna probe me like what does this thing do? You know? And then,

and then it's like, so eventually I, you know, I was not paying attention and I'm in one of the four generically generated trailers in this game. And I see the abductor light go from green to red. And this plunger like lunges out, sucks on my car and it starts just dragging my car away.

And of course I go booking after it like crazy. And thankfully it didn't, it lets go after a little while, but it was like, that wasn't very nice. But then these suckers later on, because the game does progressively throw more anomalies and get harder,

like harder as you play and you go deeper into the zone. And at one point I had zero time. I had to get out of this zone. It was collapsing on me. And a freaking abductor came along and latched onto my car and drug it halfway up a mountain. And I was cussing that thing the whole time because I was just like, just let my, give me my car back. And I mean, I still made it out alive, but like, you know, to its credit, that's what these anomalies

are supposed to do. They're supposed to mess with you. They're supposed to cause havoc and chaos. But for me, the Abductor, I don't know if it's because it was the first one or just because it was always that moment of trying to chase it down and get the car back before it carried it too far away kind of thing. But I thought that was a neat touch. What about you, Ryan?

That's a good one. For me, it was the airstrips. I don't know how your experiences were with it. Those were fun. And it was fun. Don't wreck your car. It was because at first I got used to the buzzsaw, chainsaw ones or whatever that would have that little blade

that would run across the red ones and so i'm cruising and not thinking anything of it and i see this kind of blue hazy strip across the ground and i'm thinking okay it's no big deal i don't see anything so i'm just gonna rip through it before something comes across and it launched my car up so high and i went off the side of this like hill and just rolled and tumbled and that's where i ended up i posted in the discord i'm like uh i don't know am i supposed to drive here and then somebody's like you can't park there and my car is just sitting on its side you know i'm like what do i do now but those i had i had a lot of fun with those i thought those

were really unique um to where once i saw them, I'm like, oh, okay, I know what this is now. But the first time I hit that, I remember my face like, I was just in utter disbelief and in shock, just whoa, as I just shot into the air, my car goes 15 feet and I just go tumbling down a hill. Well, what's funny is you actually have an achievement that you got for that, Ryan, where it says travel more than 50 feet while airborne. Oh, nice. And I knew exactly what caused that for you to get that achievement too. That was me. Similarly, there was an achievement I got for remaining airborne for six seconds. And then that's another one that you can get if you kind of play around and go off the

right ledges. For me, I'll share the one that I thought was the most annoying. I don't know about you guys. It was the one that was like the set trap where all of a sudden the six pylons would raise and start shooting electricity. It's so annoying because there's no indication that it's coming up and you have to slam on the brakes and just kind of like wait 10 seconds until the electricity stops in front and then you can drive through. But that's kind of like an example where I was like, don't just annoy me for eight seconds.

The airstrip way cooler anomaly, the abductors. Awesome. Even the bubble bunnies and all the other stuff in this game. I have to point out the one because this one really added to the mood of the game for me. But the mannequins, the crash test dummies. Those are creepy. Those things would randomly spawn anywhere. And so you'd come across a bunch of them in the road.

And if you hit them, they're like, they got some kind of like explosive in them. They blow up, man. Oh, I know all about that. What's really weird is you could get out of your car, go to the back of your car and turn around. And there'd be one of those suckers right there staring at you because they could just randomly pop up anywhere. And I remember getting jump scared so bad because I was just in the back of my car, putting some of my

stuff down. I turn around and there's a freaking mannequin right there where it was not like two seconds ago. And I was just like, Oh my gosh, like, where did you come from you know and so i i will say kudos to them on that because it really added to that weird creepiness kind of vibe for this game too dude this is the first time i saw those i was like oh sweet mannequins i'm gonna run these bad boys over and come back it's loud too yeah it was super loud it definitely caught me off guard and then like we said lots of uh repair putty oh yeah and on the extreme side because sometimes when you check your map a certain junction will have extreme anomalies and sometimes i would still choose to drive through them because i'm like well it's four junctions to beeline it or i've got to go six

if i want to avoid that well i'm just going to go straight there. Sometimes the whole zone is a hurricane and these are no joke. I don't know if you guys drove through hurricanes or not. It'll blow your vehicle up on two wheels on the side. It'll make you go flying off the road. I mean, it's no joke. And some of the extreme anomalies are actually pretty interesting to try to drive your way through. All right. Well, let's go ahead and move on and let's talk a little bit about the garage. This is actually what I thought was the best stuff in the game. I hated any time I was driving and going through the game. I did not mind the car maintenance stuff nearly as much.

Let's start with like basic maintenance and the status monitor. All right. What can go wrong out driving in your car? And how do you fix it back in the garage? Everything. I was just going to say. Everything can go wrong. Everything. Segmented parts of your car too, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's a car. You have a hood, twoenders four doors two quarter panels two bumpers headlights i mean you know all of these things are individual components on your car plus your tires plus your engine um plus a rear hatch because it's a station wagon i mean you can which you can hear your head you can hear josh's auto insurance history talking right now yeah that's true people like quarter panels the driver quarter panel he's like well you see uh so yeah you you do have all these components and it is funny you can actually hit yourself in the head with the rear with the rear hatch um which i thought was a neat

little touch on that as well i'm with you paul i thought this was one of the best parts of the game like i i did not think i would like it as much as I did, but tinkering with your car, taking care of my baby, upgrading it, you know, making sure, Hey, I can't go out on this run with doors that are damaged as bad. I better get these things fixed up. And Oh, I unlock steel doors now instead of the crude panels. Like, yeah, like let's go so for me a guy that loves progression this was that carrot for me like the just the upgrade path on the car the seeing this thing get tougher and stronger and able to drive further and faster and that kind of stuff was really a big draw for me yeah brian will you talk a little bit about like repair putty and mechanics kits that part might have been a little lame guys i was hoping we didn't bring that up i actually found it pretty

hysterical well it's all magic i it's definitely all magic i do like also that uh josh tried to say that like you know he didn't have anything with the car and it was just it was his favorite part but pretty soon he's going to be calling it my precious. He's like, my precious. It doesn't make me crazy, I swear, guys. I swear. Oh my goodness, they're right. It is driving me mad. No, but so

I did think it was really cool. You go up, you park your car on this little kind of mechanics platform area and you have the screen set up and it shows you all the different parameters or outlines of the parts of your vehicle how to fix them and how to repair them is a little uh less streamlined a little less streamlined um like we said earlier you need a lot of chemicals because you're going to need a lot of repair putty.

So repair putty and sealants is what you use for a lot of the stuff. Anytime you got damage on your panels, your side panels, quarter panels, hood, all that stuff, you just get this big tub and you take a big old scoop of plaster and just... Body filler is what it is but just bondo you're just bondoing the whole car together and you just slap it on there all right that panel's good oh that panel's good all this tire's sealed our needs sealed and then you just take this little gun and just shoot shoot that on there and that's sealed up so the repairs were interesting to me and it felt super tedious to where a lot of times i just wouldn't repair it in between runs because i'm like i yeah i just have no desire to go around

this whole car and repair every single stinking panel i'll make sure my lights are good and the bump front bumper is good and let's go you know so yeah it was it was interesting uh part of the game and the cool thing is that things will go wrong and as your vehicle gets damaged you can press and hold a button to scan it so like for example you can look at your windshield and it's cracked like you can see also a little symbol where it has a little crack symbol but if you look at it and scan it'll say you can fix this with a ceiling kit. And now I know, okay, I'll go craft a ceiling kit and I can fix it.

There were other things that I got hit with where I had like short-circuited spark plugs. Now you gotta go craft a electrician's kit. I did think that stuff was pretty interesting. I will say it felt a little bit overly needy because when you look at that status meter, it'll tell you your car's health is at 50%. Well, do I really have to create more repair putty and hit these wheels that are two thirds health? Or can I chance it and let it go?

And pretty quickly, you realize you can chance a lot of things. I would kind of prioritize my bumpers because I'm going to hit stuff yep and headlights because if you're stuck without headlights and especially if you hit the eerie darkness it's definitely tough to work your way around yeah of course later in the game you start to upgrade and you get side lights and all these floodlights and whatnot but yeah i will say in regards to the car repairs that is tedious um this game does do a good job of giving you ways to alleviate the tedium. You get this repair machine where you can stick damaged parts in it, and after you come back from a run, they'll be completely fully healed.

Ryan, Paul was picking on us because you and I always forgot to put the car in drive when you get in. And there's actually an achievement that says over 20 times, like try to drive with the car in park. And Paul was like, did you guys really do this? And we were like, yes, 20, 20. Yes. Come on.

What other game ever? Like do you have to do that in drive? Yeah. I think I did it twice and then i never forgot but but then you get this you get this attachment to your car that's called like the auto parker that will make it so that it says like and it makes it sound all technical and it goes like weight sensors and proximity sensors in the driver's seat will automatically put the car in park and drive when the driver gets in and out this is

truly the technology of the future it's like the description yeah but dude the second i unlocked that i was just like yeah and i just get out i'd be like i don't have to put it in drive and park anymore i don't know that making something intentionally tedious and then giving you a way to alleviate that tedium is necessarily the best thing to do. No, but at the same time, they got me because I was so glad when I got those things. Again, rolling you to sleep with bad stuff and then mediocre stuff makes you feel good.

We'll have to go to our break soon. But last thing I wanted to bring up is the friendly dumpster uh adding into more of just the magical things of your garage you want some when you come back from paul you want some panels yeah when when you when you come back on a run maybe your car basically got destroyed and you don't have any mats so how are you supposed to get back out on the road well the friendly dumpster will just start vomiting up random parts that you need. But what's so funny is that this bugged out multiple times on me where it would not stop shooting out doors and panels.

I sent you guys a screenshot picture where I had legitimately 300 panels and doors out right next to the dumpster. You had the friendliest dumpster ever, Paul. I know. I didn't get that dumpster. I know. My dumpster was stingy. My immediate reaction was, sweet, unlimited scrapped metal. I'm going to scrap all of this.

Well, here's the thing. It was almost like a graphical glitch because none of those were real. I would pick up that panel, put it on my car and I can see it. But as soon as I would pick anything else up, that would disappear. So now I have to clear all this stuff out. I was like, all right, well, I'll just take my scrapper. Well, if you take your scrapper to that, they explode. When you scrap them, you get nothing out of it. And then it hurts your character by like five percent so i would take my scrapper blow myself up to zero percent run into the garage heal myself go back bust another 20 panels i had to do that about 14 times just to clear the map of all this garbage

on the screen and it happened to me two more times where the dumpster wouldn't stop it just keeps shooting crap out so the game for me i think i had more bugs than you guys did but that was like one example where it was such a nuisance because now i had to spend like 10 minutes just to get rid of this glitch crap coming out of my dumpster your screenshot i literally thought you were having like a graphical glitch until you were like no josh that's's 300 car panels laying on the ground. And then I lost it. I was like, oh, my goodness.

Yeah. Thankfully, I didn't run into that bug. But I just like to think that your dumpster really loved you, Paul. Really did. The first time hero. I don't know if you guys died, but I died one time because I was a little overzealous on a different section. And I went back. And then I guess there may be more generous at the dumpster after you die.

But like I hit the dumpster and then I started spewing out panels. I'm like, I was excited. I was like, oh, am I going to get the Paul glitch? You know, and it was shooting and then it stopped. And I was like, oh, after like seven or eight, it stopped. I think they give you the minimum. So at least your car can have all 12 panels and doors and headlights they at least give you yeah at least at least some all right well let's go ahead and take

our last break and then we'll come back and talk about progression with car upgrades all right so we talked a little bit about progression with the map which was very difficult to explain by podcast difficult difficult to learn in game. I think that when we are talking about the fabrication station, this is when we're talking about progression to your character, your car and your garage. And boy, you guys know this. I played the first third of this game, not realizing that there were like nine tabs to this. All I saw was the home screen on the fabrication station and at one point i'm like guys where are you finding blueprints

because i can't find any and i played a third of this game only crafting more crude panels crude headlights and crude doors not knowing how i could unlock these blueprints. Dude, that was so good. When Paul, when Paul was asking us, are you guys finding blueprints? And I went, what do you mean?

Like, what do you mean finding them? And he was like, I'm like 12 hours in. I haven't found a single blueprint yet. And I was like, Paul, you,

you, you make them at the fabrication station. And he was like, I haven't found any blueprints. And I'm like, what are you talking about? No, you make them at the fabrication station. And he was like, I haven't found any blueprints. And I'm like, what are you talking about? No, you make them. Yeah. And I was like, no, Josh, not like the detailing station.

I know how to craft that stuff. I have a million steel plates, and I can't do anything with them. And then it was so funny because we literally, Paul was trying to explain that he knew what all these like stations were and i'm going like paul it's just right there like what are you talking about so we had the live paul had to like live stream his feed so that i could be like yeah yeah and you were like yeah i know where this thing's at and i'm like paul like look at the top and you were like what are you talking about i'm like look at the top there And you were like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, look at the top. There's like 10 tabs there.

Scroll over. And that's when you were like, no, there's not. And then you clicked one and you were like, it pulls into a whole nother menu. There's like eight different headlights you can make. And then there's like the door panel where there's like eight different types of doors you can make for your car.

And you were just like, what the bleep? It was just like this. And then I just remember you going like, I've been playing this game for 12 hours and I haven't gotten a single upgrade. Paul was hamstrung for so long. Oh yeah. Like I was a pro at driving out there with the crude car parts.

I will say that was the best hour of the game for me because I got to unlock like 24 upgrades in a row, and I upgraded every piece on my car. And for the record, going from crude headlights to headlights is literally day and night. Yeah, it is so much better. You had so much stable energy. Oh, yeah, that was actually a blast was running through so many upgrades immediately because I had a million parts. Oh, yeah. I just kept shoving into lockers.

I'm like, I don't know what to do with all of it. All right. Oh, I will say I have one complaint about the fabrication station. Sometimes in order to unlock a new part, it would require that you scan certain anomalies. And I don't know about you guys. I was not scanning any anomalies because i was like well why would i and then it was like oh before you can craft a steel bumper i think it was you have to scan an abductor and i was like oh come on i have all the mats i've got the energy i have all the other

parts so then for a while i was stopping to scan every single anomaly and then i could unlock them uh i don't know if that was really necessary because scanning the anomalies just gives you the name. It doesn't really matter. You know what they do. I don't care that it's called hot dust. When I drive into it, I hear the Geiger counter and I'm taking radiation. I know what it is. So that I found to be a little bit of an annoyance. But otherwise, the fabrication station was always fun. Sometimes you got to build a whole new part of your garage where this is i think they called it like a matter deconstructor yeah

because i remember being out in the field and i found like what did they call them like loot clams or something like that it looks like a clam and it says like it could hold treasure but you got to find a way to open it well the matter deconstructor you chuck parts into it and it spits out you know whatever it can break it down into you know so unlocking new pieces like that in the garage i always found to be an awful lot of fun um i do want to move on to my absolute favorite part of this game and it is the best idea that they had in development for this game. And it's the fact that your car develops quirks. Yes.

All right. This is so cool. So as you're out in the world, you know, getting damage from anomalies and crashing into stuff, your car will start to have issues that correlate to something else. And you have what is called a tinker station in the garage that helps you diagnose the problem and it tells you how to fix it. So you activate the tinker station and it's not immediately obvious what it does. There's four columns of words and it basically just fits this format. When part A does this, then part B does this.

And so, for example, the first quirk I realized is every time I turned my wheel and I would hold it there, my headlights would dim. So I would go into the tinker station and I could put when steering wheel constantly turns, headlights dim. And then sure enough, it says, ding, ding, you are correct. Here's what you have to craft. You need a light bulb replacement. And then I went ahead, I stuck that into the tinker station, and then it cured my car of that quirk. That's a very minor one. You can have far bigger issues where all your car doors open, or a tire falls off your car, or the engine jolts forward.

And you only get eight guesses to finish your diagnosis. And so you can't just brute force your way through it like a hacker. But what a cool idea to give you these hilarious quirks and then giving you a little bit of a mini game to diagnose it. I thought this was the best part of the game. It took me a minute because I kind of skipped over what the Tinker Station did. And for me, it was every time I'd close my rear hatch, my horn would honk,

but it would, it took me, I don't know how many times it took me before. I was like, why the heck is the horn honking? I just thought that was normal. That did it to mine too. Cause it's an old station wagon,

right? It's a feature. Yeah. Not a bug. But then I had one where every time I put my car into park, the passenger door would pop open, you know? And like, and so it's like, these are the little things. And it's funny because you don't even notice them at first,

you know? And then it is, I thought that was a neat touch. You can live with most of these quirks. Like Paul said, some of them, they start to get pretty severe because the last thing you want is your doors popping open when you're in like a radiation storm or something like that. But yeah, I thought that was a really neat idea. And I liked the way they went about like trying, and you had to diagnose it. You could not fix it until you successfully diagnosed it. And then it was an easy fix at that point.

Like you said, you just needed like a kit or something, you know, which are very common. But I did think that that was a neat thing for them to throw in there to just give more personality to your car. Yeah, it was it was cool to have that like like it is it's just quirks you know it's these weird little things to give it more personality so you do almost bond with your car because it has these weird little things that

it does um yeah like you guys said it's it's nothing that's overly obnoxious but it was just a cool little feature. I thought that was really neat that they did that. All right, so before we read some community reviews and then do our leaderboard segment, last question for you guys. What change would you make to improve Pacific Drive? And if you want, it can be something relatively minor

like beefing up the tutorial, letting you know twice how to do this stuff, or it can be total overhauls of certain mechanics. What would you guys do to this? Oh, I mean, for me, you have to remove the repetition. Honestly, that, that was the death knell for this game. For me, I can't, I can't tolerate fluff to just fluff playtime. Like, honestly, you guys know I have, like, you know, gamer ADD. If I'm not constantly discovering new things or really invested in the story or something like that, I just want to move on to the next game at that point. And this was the fatal flaw with Pacific Drive, in my opinion, was it just was super repetitious. Some people like repetition.

They like that familiarity, you know, but I don't want to drive through zone E8 ever again in my life. I've driven through it 400 times at this point and I'm only driving through it to get to zone E6 so that I can then get to zone F4 and so on and so forth and it's like i to me why like why are you putting me through this why are you making me loot the exact same model of trailer for the umpteenth hundredth time so that i can find some plastic bits, you know? I mean, that to me was the drastic flaw in this game

is stop the repetition. And look, I know it's considered like a survival crafting game in a way, and that's just part of it. But we have played a dozen of those types of games and some of them do it very, very well. This one did it really, really poorly. So, you know, however you want to fix that.

I mean, I don't want to launch into a huge tirade, but that's the one thing that I would change about Pacific Drive in a heartbeat. Yes, you do. Do it. I'm not going to. I'm not going to. Even if it was as simple as paying some stable limb energy and letting you bypass a junction,

or you could optionally do it to save it. Maybe just give you like some more choice yeah well we've had talks about um uh fast travel on different games you know and like uh some gamer uh developers have said you know we're not going to do that we want to make the experience you know as you travel to that place good and and you should want to do that but this one you just don't because it's the same thing you know you're you're driving you're trying to do that, but this one you just don't because it's the same thing. You're driving. You're trying to avoid the objects.

You're trying to keep your car alive. All you're trying to do is get to that space so you can get to the next section of the game. You shouldn't have a part of a game to where you dread that section to get to the fun part. I found myself every time I was doing that or trying To get to the fun part. I found myself. Every time I was doing that. Or trying to get to an area.

I just wanted to get that done. So I could get back to the garage. To tinker and do cool things with my car. I'm with Josh on this one. Just the repetition of just. Over and over the same areas. The same houses. The same mats.

It was just too much like i understand you can only do so much within a game but it was just too much repetition for me yeah it's it it's the opposite of fast travel to make you re-travel the same area 400 times in a row it's but the thing is like it's not... We talked about Dragon's Dogma, right? To where they're saying, hey, there's not a lot of fast travel, but you'll find interesting things along the way.

In Pacific Drive, there's no interesting things. That's the problem. Like, oh, there's an anomaly. I've seen that anomaly 300 times now. I just drive around it. No big whoop. And so that's the biggest problem

is that there's really not anything interesting that's happening on your 50th trip through that zone. Yep. And yet you still have to stop and scrap stuff because you're going to need those early mats. And it's just a lot of repetitious resource gathering also. I mean, that's one of my biggest complaints. I have a two-part thing that I think would drastically improve this game. I'm not going to say change everything because this game sucks,

even though that's true. I'm not going to say that. I would say, first of all, they have to let you do more stuff on foot because when you get out of your car, there is nothing to do other than to run up to a resource and I'm going to equip.

Okay. If I want to open a trunk, I have to do the pry bar. If I want to smash open this certain container, I use my impact hammer. Oh, if I want to bust out these lights and get the bulbs, I got to use my vacuum. And all you're doing is just clicking the tool and pressing and holding it to gather the mat. And you're just doing that over and over and over. There is no combat in this game. You are not engaging in combat on foot or in your car. I think what would really add a lot to this game is you have to survive while you're in your car, but give me a little bit of offense in this game as well.

When I get out of my car, have some guns, have some of the anomalies come fight me. They have like the bunnies that are like the sentinels in the matrix. They attach to your car let me shoot them instead of just taking a scrapper and then they roll off the car um and then imagine if this game was also co-op all right imagine josh you and i are in the car together and you're shouting no go around it to the right and then the car crashes and now i'm jumping out and I'm trying to diagnose the issues with the car and I'm crafting stuff out of the trunk while you're pulling out your gun and fighting the anomalies while I'm fixing the car. That to me sounds exciting as opposed to, oh, I have to drive around the hot sand yet again and now I'm just going to walk up and loot this

backpack. That loop is so boring. I feel like if you made that switch and I know that's a major change, right? That's you're changing the core mechanic of the game, but that would be an actual fun product. Like give me a jump puzzle, man. Like, like honestly,

like anything, anything different while I'm out on foot, instead of walking up these four stairs into this trailer and then looting this backpack and then walking back to my car and putting the stuff in my trunk. Like, I mean, there's a gajillion different ways that could go about adding some variety

to the actual gameplay, but sadly that part is just not there. Yeah. All right. Well, let's move into the community reviews and see what the other people of the world have to say about this game. Okay. So we always, I mean, you guys have probably picked up some of our opinions on the game.

We always like to give some other viewpoints. It is not our job to tell you how you should feel about this game. It is our job to let you know whether you think you might like it or not. And part of that is we'd like to give you some reviews from other people as well. So this first review is recommended. This person is 95 hours on record. I'm so sorry for this person. Oh my God. What a sad life.

All right. And it says Pacific Drive is a fun niche style game. It does not really push any... Wrong. Go ahead. Go ahead. It does not really push any limits or cover new ground in gaming but it is entertaining for a time the best part of the game is exploration i enjoy traversing the land and destroying my vehicle as i go place to place

much of everything else about this game is average to bad but not so bad that i would not recommend it the customization of the car is extremely limited and feels pointless and shallow. Even the parts with different purposes can be narrowed down to one being the best overall, rather than spending time with the tedious inventory system to change out for very minor benefits. The inventory system is very basic and also horribly implemented. I also believe this is the buggiest part of the game. My only crash in over 80 hours has been due to the inventory system not being able to handle item

movement. Looting and gathering is only rewarding while it is being learned. After the system is learned, it is mundane and lacks the excitement of discovery. That is such a great point at the end. That is very true. The first time you see or do something, it's neat, and then

it immediately loses all appeal. Yep. Imagine spending 95 hours doing that. Oh, I know. Yeah. So that was a recommended review. This next one is not recommended. 0.8 hours on record.

And it says, it's probably just not for me, but the game feels way too complex. I know I didn't play much, but I've played tons of survival games and the crafting, looting, and basically every functionality feels way too deep and I know I didn't play much, but I've played tons of survival games and the crafting, looting, and basically every functionality feels way too deep and complex for me. And I think a lot of people will resonate with that. I like the lore, the presentation, and the story,

and just the general idea of the game, but it falls short by being a bit too complex. That's in part due to poor tutorial. Exactly. And they hit you with too much of that at the same time. They teach you about refueling your car and refueling the can inside the car that attaches to the upper left.

And here's how you diagnose. And here's how you craft on the workbench. And here's how you craft in the back of your car. And here's how you install cardboard boxes. And they hit you with all of that once. And then they never teach you again to where i ran out of fuel on one run totally forgot i had a fuel can in the car i just abandoned the run and then later when i was tinkering in the back of my car i was like oh i've got a fuel can oh i'm such an idiot i had all that fuel right there why didn't i you know but i didn't remember because the game throws so much at you

in one little truncated spot i and i listen i know there's going to be people like man you guys are old and dumb you know dude we've been gaming for a long time i the the ui elements in this game in a lot of the things like the fabricator or the detailing station or, I mean, you get a fax machine. I had no idea what the heck this fax machine did. Oh, Josh, the fax machine is pointless. It's absolutely pointless. It holds your audio files. So you don't have to put them in your locker and that's it. I built the fax machine. I got probably 15 messages on that thing and none of them make any sense. They don't add to the Lord. don't add to the entertainment it's it's a pointless upgrade there's just a lot of systems

that are just poorly designed poorly explained poorly executed tagline of the game yeah well I real quick to like I I'm not one that likes to leave you know a lot of games will leave you a notification

on unchecked items within your like menu or different things like that. Yeah. I went in and I looked and I was so overwhelmed with how many there were. I completely just abandoned it. I said, nope, I'm not going to even look at any of these. I looked through two or three, and then I said, there's way too many to try to check off so I don't have that dumb yellow icon on my top screen or whatever. So I just abandoned it and said, no thanks. That's what a lot of the game is, is just a lot of that.

Yeah. All right. So this next one is recommended, 28 hours on record. If you're expecting a truly open world driving and crafting game, you're going to be disappointed. At its core, this is an extraction looter. It has a gameplay loop of visiting and revisiting a pool of maps with randomized placements, hazard modifiers, and time limit,

unless visiting a map with the no time limit modifier. There's a ton of quality of life options to change how stressful this experience may be, but fundamentally it's a mechanic. It's it fundamentally. If it's a mechanic you don't like, then you're not going to have fun in this game. That is Paul. One hundred percent. Yep. Like honestly,

this is escape from Tarkov, but with a car and not other people shooting and no guns. Yeah, with escape from Tarkov with no guns and no fighting and pointless upgrades and and you're just grabbing four kinds of loot over and over and they they don't even look different it's just it's a blue square or a red square in my inventory everything about this game is so dumb i'm sorry you don't want glass shards i know right and i know a lot of people worked really hard and for

the niche audience that love this game all the power in the world to you guys, this is not a major release. I looked on Steam charts. There's like 5,000 people playing it right now. Those 5,000 people must love it. But I think for a lot of your average gamers, you're going to jump into this and say, where's the action and where's the fun?

Well, this last review, I think, hits the nail on the head. It is not recommended. And it says it's so close. This person has 10 hours on record, by the way. And it says it's so close. This person has 10 hours on record, by the way. And it says it's so close to being fun. There's so many little things that bring the experience down. Requiring me to press and hold a button to open containers is probably my biggest complaint. It simply makes the game slower for no discernible reason. This is like

baby's first video game type decision making from the developers. No one wants to wait to look in a container. No one wants exploration wait to look in a container. No one wants exploration speed to be artificially hamstrung. Three people yelling at me across a radio about things that have nothing to do with me does not a story make. Picking up audio recordings for exposition dumps is also not fun. I thought we figured this out when Fallout 76 tried to get away with it. Opening my backpack to read about things I see in the game is not a good way to convey information to the player. Inventory management, which is a huge part of the game, is also tedious and boring. Not being able to save in any meaningful places

is also a bad choice. It's a big time sink to commit to a run, and the runs get longer and longer the more you play, which compounds the problem further. Again, I have to ask what the point of that decision is. It ends up feeling like an arbitrary restriction to make the game longer instead of improving the experience. The save thing has ruffled a lot of feathers. I don't have as big of an issue with that. I don't either. If I can't finish a run, just hit escape.

It pauses. Like Elden Ring, you can't pause. You bring up your menu and you can still die. In Pacific Drive, just hit escape, go do whatever you got to do, return in a couple hours, and then finish your run. I don't have as much heartburn over that. We're not going to play guess the score or anything,

but right now the actual Steam score is 81% for this game. It's a bit high. That's higher than I thought. Yeah, definitely. I think on Metacritic, it's a 78 on PC and a 77 on PS five, which,

which is about right. I think that's kind of where it deserves to be. All right. Are we ready to go to the leaderboards? Let's do it. Any closing comments before we hit that? All right, let's, let's go to the leaderboards let's do it any closing comments before we hit that all right let's let's go to the leaderboard for listeners who might be new if you go to video gamers pod.com there's a tab for leaderboards if you tab over that or mouse over it you can

bring up our top 10 games of all time you can also bring up our deep dive leaderboard where after every deep dive each of us puts it on our leaderboard where does this game stack up against everything else for example i have at the top stuff like red dead redemption 2 zelda tears of the kingdom cyberpunk disco elysium god of war you know absolute classic games down in the middle we got some stuff more along the lines of like uh arc v rising vermentide 2 killing floor 2 stuff like that on the very bottom i have stuff like escape from tarkov which we already talked about me not liking elite dangerous battlefield 2042 stuff like that so where are you guys gonna stick pacific drive a game that i would say i has a lot of stuff going for it that I would normally like.

It's a smaller studio. It's under 30 bucks. It's relatively short. Those are all things that I like, but as far as everything else goes, I mean, I hated the experience of playing this game. And honestly, the first third where I did not know about any upgrades, I actually thought was more exciting because it forced me to be more careful with my car. This game's not difficult. No, it's not hard. Yeah,

no, it's not difficult and it's not fun. And it just did not drive with me on any level. I, I immediately said, this is going in my bottom 10. No questions asked. Uh,

I think on my leaderboard i'm gonna put it at 95 out of 105 so i i did not like this game at all almost unredeemable all around wow that's not something we hear from paul very often no no i'm usually pretty nuanced with my takes or yeah you'll like this this is maybe not so much my thing i found this game to be overall abysmal and uh completely dead of any fun ryan how about you i'm just i'm still shook by paul's uh i know thing there so my am i too high or too low on it ryan you're a little too high in my opinion put it last ryan last last last i i have a little bit of a smaller leaderboard than the other guys because i haven't been here as long but um i have at 34, Battlefield 2042, a completely horrible game. This one at 33, Paul would have some difference to it,

but Disco Elysium. But this was pre-audio, pre-final cut. So I could revisit that. But I'm going to throw this at the end. I'm going to put it at 35. At the very bottom? Yeah. It's at the very bottom for me.

As much as I wanted to absolutely love this game, you mentioned it, Josh. I love the music. I would sit and vibe. That was the part I looked forward to the most. I'm like, I just want to chill, listen to the music, have the rain come down in the forest, and I'm going to drive through this area,

and then I'd have to deal with all the nonsense of the actual game. The game took away from the good part, which was just the vibe. So, yeah, this one's going to go right at the bottom for me. I wanted nothing more than to finish this game and to finish this episode so that I wouldn't have to ever touch it again. Mine's already uninstalled. It's gone. Nice.

All right, Josh. I know this episode is going long. This is one of those things that we put a lot of games out there. We talk about episode is going long. Um, this, I just, this is one of those things that we put a lot of games out there. We, we talk about a lot of games. We were all pretty excited about Pacific. I was so excited. I was so excited. Yeah. Like none of us like slamming a game. It's just, there are times when a game has the potential to be great, but then is ruined by certain aspects. We've seen this time and time again, Forspoken was one of those, um, you know, hood outlaws and legends was another one. I mean, there's, there's any number of games where it's like, dude, there,

there's, you almost had something. That's why I really liked that one review where the guy said, it's almost, it's so close to being good, but it not yeah totally agree um great idea yeah and so i am a little bit higher on it than you guys i will say that for somebody like me the repetition was really really causing me issues towards the end um i don't like that aspect there were parts that i really did enjoy i did like driving i felt like the game was very atmospheric which i liked a lot but it was just this game needed another year or maybe two to like cook in the oven and come up with some actually really good gameplay elements yeah and an extra 20 million or something like give it more time and it could have been something it's kind of like it's like having a chocolate chip cookie where somebody forgot to put the chocolate chips in it.

You know, it's like it's a cookie, but there's just something critical missing about this game. And that's the way I feel about it too. Even though I'm higher than you guys, I am unfortunately still down on this game a little bit. I'm going to put it at 83 for me, which is one above Escape from Tarkov and The Forest. Both are games that I felt were very tedious in a lot of ways. It is a shame because I do feel like this was a passion project from

the developers. And there's a lot of polish to the game in some ways. But you forgot an ingredient, man. And it really, really tarnishes the game overall, unfortunately for me as well. Gradient was fun. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I can, I mean, it is fun until you realize that it's not fun anymore, but that happens fairly early on in the game. And again, if you're the kind of person that doesn't mind repetition and there are people out there, like, honestly, I know, like there's my, like my wife is like, she's like, I'd work in a factory where I build the same thing every single day over and over. She likes that, you know, for me, that would drive me bananas, but I get that there's a comfort to be found there for

some people. So if you're the kind of person that you don't mind doing the same thing over and over, you might find this game to be incredible. And if you found this podcast because you love Pacific Drive, and now you're mad at us because you're like, how can you slander my game? It's just that flavor is not there for everybody. And especially for us, it just didn't land. That's why after the demo, I was screaming from the rooftops. This game is awesome. This is going to be so good. Just driving in. You're in your truck, and then you get sucked in there. I was 100% in, and then nothing changed.

It was the same thing the whole time. Play the demo. Play the demo. That's the whole game without any of the tedium. Play the demo, have fun, and then go on to another game. That's perfect. Actually, I don't think the demo is Play the demo. That's the whole game without any of the tedium. Play the demo, have fun, and then go on to another game. That's perfect. Actually, I don't think the demo is still available now. Probably not.

It might not be. Play it for two hours and then refund it, right? Now, if they said Pacific Drive way outsold all of our expectations, we're putting together a crack team of developers, we're making Pacific Drive 2 to we're going all out. We're pumping in tons of money. All these gifted people were bringing along board. I think all the three of us would pick it up in a heartbeat.

Yeah. Like if they actually, cause it's such a cool kernel of an idea, there's nothing wrong with the idea of getting in a station wagon, pimping it out and having all these anomalies. It's just purely execution. It seems like it just needed more time more money more love more innovation but i would absolutely give pacific

drive to a shot oh agreed yeah all right well you know i'm glad we didn't have to come to fisticuffs josh i was a little worried this might be one game where you're like it's just so fun you're missing out it's top 20 and i was gonna have to go bananas uh i'm glad we're all somewhat on the same page paul before recording i hate this game man i i i flat out told ryan i said i said because you guys already knew how much i hated it i just said ryan if josh comes in and just starts praising this game, I'm going to lose it. I do get why people could like it.

Legitimately, I get that. It's very chill. It's very calm for the most part. It's very timid in how much the gameplay puts at you. But yeah, I don't know. I feel bad. It missed the mark for us. i will say and you know it did miss the mark but like i i uh with what paul said about um wanting guns and wanting action every time i got out of my car and it's like an eerie dreary forest landscape and i'm looking around i was expecting something to come get me. But then it never happened. And nothing ever did.

Yes, I know. Nothing ever did. And so I was just always left wanting that, even though it would have freaked me out and I would have screamed like a little girl. I just never got that. And that would have made, just that little bit, would have made the difference, not substantially,

but a little bit to make it at least some, some somewhat palatable for me, you know? Yeah, totally agree with you, Ryan. All right. Well,

I think that wraps up our deep dive on Pacific drive. As a reminder, please make sure to rate our show five stars and swing by our Patreon support page to see options for bonus episodes, shout out on the show, all that good stuff. That's at multiplayer squad.com come join our free discord hit us up on socials at video gamers pod thank you so much to everyone for listening until next time happy gaming all right i'm out of here people let me just put this in oh i'm not a drive oh let me oh all right come back

come back car all right see you everybody