The Texture of Pacific Drive

Pacific Drive is an incredible game. So incredible, it's likely to be one of, if not, the best games I've played this year. For those who have yet to experience it, Pacific Drive is a survival game about fixing up and driving this beat up station wagon across an irradiated and haunted exclusion zone on the Olympic Peninsula. What makes the game so great is how *manual* the game is. You don't just customize your car in a menu, you go up to the panel, rip it off, walk it to your storage, grab or craft a replacement, and bolt the new one on yourself. You don't just hop in the car and slam on the gas, you have to get in, hold the turn key long enough to start it, put it in drive, turn your headlights on, and then go. Even driving itself, there is no 3rd person mode, you have to see where you are going through the windshield, rain, and/or wipers. To check your map means actually taking your eyes off the road to look at the sci-fi doo-hicky in the passenger seat and risk hitting a tree or anomaly.

But as good as the mechanics (there's some car pun here) of this game are, it's not what I want to dig into. What's really kept me thinking about this game for so long is it's music, more specifically, it's radio. While there is an original full length soundtrack for this game, there is also a selection of licensed tracks from bands local to the Pacific Northwest that play over the car and garage's radio if you decide to tune in. And personally, I was always tuning in. So much so that I feel a bit guilty I never *really* listened to the original soundtrack (which also sounds incredible from the small amount of exposure I did get). The selection of tracks just perfectly fit into my existing music tastes with tracks ranging from more classic Seattle grunge, to more upbeat Alternative Rock, to sparkling synthwave, and even some classic style country.

Music has always been an incredibly important part of my life. I've played the Trumpet and performed in symphonic and jazz ensembles for more than half of life (going on 16 years at time of writing). I never had plans to try and play professionally, but it nonetheless has been a major driver of much of my life. I choose my college because I earned a music scholarship. I met some of my best friends (including my wife) and had some of my best memories playing in the various bands throughout college. And it continues to be a source of joy in my life through the community band that I'm currently apart of. And while the music of Pacific Drive is a far cry from the more traditional symphonic and jazz tunes I play on my own instrument, the more time you spend around music, the more you see how universal it all is.

But what really ties the room together is how this music in the context of Pacific Drive fundamentally changes the texture of the game. At it's core, Pacific Drive is a survival game through and through. You are continually scavenging resources to upgrade and maintain your car and garage. And due to the setting based heavily on the same inspiration the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series (Go read *Roadside Picnic* \[This is a threat]), horror themes come very naturally. And this normally would be a problem for me, being the big baby I am when it comes to most horror media. And that's where the radio comes in. It's much easier to drown out the horrors of the zone when your trucking down the highway blaring *1964* by I Will Keep Your Ghost. But it goes even further than that, as it increases the tension when you do need to get out of car to scavenge. The sound design is crafted thoughtfully enough that the radio becomes perfectly muffled when outside the car with the doors closed. You could leave a door open blare your tunes over the open air, but it'll likely drown out the distinctive sound ques of the different anomalies. In a way, it lets you tailor the experience to your own tastes, while simultaneously using that against you by creating a disadvantage in terms of spacial awareness via sound, and by anomalies taking that safety net away when they mess up your car.

A wise gamer once said:

"Sometimes you play a game at just the right time in your life" -Razbuten.

And Pacific Drive is a perfect example of that for me. It came into my life at a time where my usual mix of music I listened to regularly was becoming stale. It had been a while since I had last found something new and updated my mega playlist, and I was becoming increasingly jaded by Spotify's shitty business practices and the degradation of their own recommendation algorithm. Then here comes this masterpiece of a title that just hands me a nearly perfect playlist on a silver platter. And some of these tracks have legitimately become all timers for me. Listed below are some of my favorites:

Interloper - Lozenge
Fancy Ketchup - Smokey Brights
Crooked Knees - Capitol
Puzzle Pieces - LEMON BOY
Los Angeles - Eyeliner