Pacific Drive is a harrowing road trip on the edge of reality

destructoid.com:

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…

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 immediately 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