Substantial Pacific Drive update brings new difficulty settings for a smoother ride

Iron Studio has released an update for Pacific Drive that should help anyone who felt the Olympic Exclusion Zone was a bit too unfriendly. The “Drive Your Way” update adds a slew of difficulty settings to fine-tune your experience, along with some other goodies.

Difficulty settings are always a good thing. Personally, I like playing at the default or mid-range settings (yes, even when reviewing a game), but I’m not going to fault someone for picking “I’m too young to die.” At the same time, if you’re a “Nightmare” sort of person, then you can also lift the difficulty for a harder experience.

I’ll give you the list of difficulty options, and then I’ll talk some more about what else is in the patch. Here they are:

• Pacific Drive – The standard Pacific Drive experience – a Pacific Drive through the Olympic Peninsula.
• Scenic Tour – Crafting requirements, resource consumption, driving difficulty, hazards, dangers, storms, and damage are all lowered or disabled. The player cannot die. A scenic route through the story of Pacific Drive.
• Joyride – The same gameplay and tension as Pacific Drive, but gathering, crafting, and research requirements are all lowered. Damage and failure penalties are minimal.
• A Sunday Drive – Focus on the Olympic Peninsula with minimal interruptions
• Nuclear Journey – Every map will be filled with low dose radiation that is harmful to the player. Storms are faster and stronger, hazards and damage are more plentiful. An unpredictable, irradiated journey that only the car can protect you from.
• Mechanic’s Road Trip – Terrain and the status of the car impact driving more. Items to repair the car are more costly to craft, and can’t be crafted on a run. A challenging drive and susceptible car will provide a test of your forethought, problem solving, and automobile experience.
• Olympic Gauntlet – All aspects of the game are much harder – An extreme gauntlet to challenge the most dedicated Breachers.
• Iron Wagon – All aspects of the game are much harder, and failing a run will delete your save file. An extreme gauntlet to challenge the most dedicated Breachers, with no room for failure.

Beyond that, there are some new cosmetic options. This is mainly the ability to paint the wheels and bumpers. However, there’s a new antenna topper and dangly thing. If that’s not enough for you, a new cosmetic DLC pack is available on the storefront.

Lastly, you can now add custom songs on the PC version. This is probably the most exciting part for me – or would be if I was planning a replay. When I played through it for review, I kept getting the same five or six songs on repeat. They weren’t bad songs, but I hate listening to the same thing over and over because it drills into my head. The credits listed, like, a hundred songs, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear a lot of them because every time I flicked on the radio, it was “Doctor Juice.”

There are a lot of people who love Pacific Drive, and I feel kind of isolated in the fact that I didn’t click with it. It’s enough that it’s one of those situations where I know everyone has their opinion, and that’s one of the few redeeming qualities of humans, but I’m so far away from some that I can’t help but raise an eyebrow. It wasn’t the difficulty I had a problem with, it just felt substantially padded and inconsistent. I dig the concept, and I love some of the things they did with it, but when I pulled up to the end credits, I was just so aggravated.

Anyway, try it yourself, you might like it. Pacific Drive is available for PC and PS5. The Drive Your Way update releases today.