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
Chapter 1: What is Pacific Drive about?
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. Let's go. Oh, wait.
I'm not in gear.
Chapter 2: What are the community reviews of the podcast?
Hold on. Hold on. You're in park going nowhere fast. Yep. Oh, boy. All right. We're going to 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 going to 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? And, 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 Shory07. It's titled Games, Friends and Good Vibes.
Chapter 3: What is the gameplay loop in Pacific Drive?
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, Shorey. That might actually take the cake for one of my favorite reviews over 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 podcast. Oh, it was a couple minutes.
Come on. At what point do we tell Shory 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. 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 all right. Thanks, Timmy. We think you're all right, too.
Yeah, you're pretty okay yourself, buddy. Pretty all right. 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. You 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.
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Chapter 4: How does car maintenance work in Pacific Drive?
Yeah, I mean, Michael would 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 these anomalies that you would come across. The world has been distorted. There's this weird kind of eeriness to it, but then there's this 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 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 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 are 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.
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Chapter 5: What are the unique anomalies in Pacific Drive?
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 like the lore of remnants and the mass hallucinations and all the stuff that they talk about?
Not it, Ryan. fine i didn't catch it 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, you know, construction signs in the road or cones or, you know, things like that. We're talking about like roads.
entities that will hook onto your car and try to drag it away or weird razor blades that'll 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.
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Chapter 6: What are the driving mechanics like in Pacific Drive?
Francis, there you go.
And then later Alan comes into the mix, but go ahead.
Yeah. And these are the guys that are like 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 any time 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. Yeah. 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.
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? Okay.
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.
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Chapter 7: How does the game handle repetition and exploration?
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. 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 basically, there's a lot of different routes of progression in this game that we can kind of divide.
The one that I want to 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. Yeah. 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 different junctions, and this is going to take a while to explain because this game is pretty complicated. 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 E7 or whatever. So kind of the whole point of this game is as you're trying 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...
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Chapter 8: What are the overall opinions on Pacific Drive?
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 and, 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 like 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, if it'll get me out of this place faster at that point.
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, 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 had to look to the side and then click and then click again and then click. Oh, no.
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