Take a rogue-trip in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. meets Stranger Things survival game Pacific Drive

rockpapershotgun.com:

If you’ve ever thought you spotted something weird while driving through creepy woodland at night then you’ll probably be up for Ironwood Studios’ debut Pacific Drive, due out in 2023. It’s a first-person “road-lite” survival game that puts you behind the wheel of a customisable station wagon deep in a locked-down military test zone full of mad science. Gaze at that homely wood-panelling as you watch the trailer below.

Devs Ironwood seem to be going for something in the ballpark of Tales From The Loop and Stranger Things. It feels like there’s a bit of the bad-ass concept of Escape From New York in there too, and the team credit S.T.A.L.K.E.R. among their influences. Pacific Drive is set in the abandoned Olympic Exclusion Zone, an area of the Pacific Northwest that was used for weird scientific experiments by the US government starting in 1955. That’s now an abandoned minefield of preternatural oddities that you’ve become trapped in after going to investigate, you nosey parker.

You’ll have to zhuzh up a handily unoccupied station wagon at your garage base as though you’re an off-brand Egon Spengler, driving it on runs around the Exclusion Zone’s various biomes while avoiding radiation and strange anomalies. Ironwood say that each storm that passes through shifts the landscape around though, so every run should be different. They recommend being aware of the area’s reputation for “old tales” and “urban legends” too.

Pacific Drive was revealed during yesterday’s Sony State Of Play livestream, along with a few other things coming to PCs in the near future. Team Ninja are developing a – surprise! – samurai game called Rise Of The Ronin, set in an open-world Japan just after the country opened up to the West. That’s