Pacific Drive's Next Fest demo has good mood but tedious survival scavenging

rockpapershotgun.com:

I've long been enamoured with the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, from the Douglas firs and waterfalls of Twin Peaks to the redwoods I once swam beneath on a road trip. Thanks to Pacific Drive's Steam Next Fest demo, I have now also barrelled through the woods and backroads of a spooky alt-history PNW in a banged-up car which is itself a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-esque artifact. I've had my eye on Pacific Drive for a few years and after playing the demo, I am delighted by parts of it but not entirely sold on its roguelikelike survival scavenge-o-rama structure. Hmm! Give it a go and tell me what you think.

Pacific Drive is set in an alternate timeline where a strange experiment in the 1940s saw a corner of Washington's Olympic Peninsula overrun with strange and dangerous anomalies until the government it walled off. Now we end up trapped inside the Olympic Exclusion Zone and bonded with a supernatural station wagon. Off we go at the behest of voices on our radio to scavenge supplies, craft tools, craft new car parts, and keep the old banger running.

I suppose I'd say Pacific Drive is a roguelikelike dungeon-crawling survival game? The demo features the playable opening scene, the hub home garage, then the first mission. The structure is: teleport to a separate mission zone, drive and walk around hunting for key items and various crafting materials, avoid dangerous anomalies, charge your magical teleporter by yoinking science orbs, then desperately zoom towards a gateway while a battle royale-style storm closes around you.

I like the procedure to stop and start your car, turning the key then shifting from drive to park. I like all these physical interfaces inside the car, controlling everything from the wipers and radio to the high-tech map by looking about. I admire the confidence to have a soundtrack with lyrical songs, not chorals or instrumentals. I like the weird anomalies, like rising rock "bollards" and eerie explosive mannequins. I like the menace of seeing and