Having already played a preview build of Pacific Drive, I felt confident going into my playthrough for this review. I’d learned a lot about this ornery but captivating driving/survival/roguelite game in those few hours — knowledge I thought I could apply from the get-go. I thought I could just start optimizing my resource collection and applying my understanding of some of its arcane systems. I envisioned a smooth run through the early missions as I explored the crumbling, glitching reality of the Olympic Exclusion Zone in the Pacific Northwest, and gradually reinforced my shabby station wagon against the wild hazards of this irradiated wilderness.
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But the Olympic Exclusion Zone, and Pacific Drive, had other ideas.
I didn’t know everything, not even close. I hadn’t yet realized that it was a good idea to scrap the radios and computers littered around abandoned settlements for electronics. I had neglected to make myself a battery jumper. I was being careful to conserve fuel, always putting the car into park and turning off the ignition, but having not yet researched the recipe for a rudimentary portable flashlight, I was leaving the car’s headlights on to illuminate my foraging. Fatal mistake. On an early story mission, I ran the car’s battery down completely.
The dice roll deciding the conditions I was driving into was also much harsher this time around. It was night, it was raining hard, and the junction zone I was in was highly unstable. The ground rumbled and shifted. Pockets of sizzling, corrosive mist crackled around me. A floating, sentry-like
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