Pacific Drive: Whispers in the Woods [REVIEW] – A Haunting Detour Worth Taking

Pacific Drive already stood out as one of the most distinctive survival experiences of 2024, blending eerie road-trip exploration with improvisational crafting and roguelike tension… it was an instant success, and now, it’s available on the Xbox platform too. Its first major DLC expansion, Whispers in the Woods, has also released alongside it, taking the experience in a direction that feels stranger, darker, and, at times, more demanding. It’s a substantial add-on with some fresh ideas, a new setting, and a different rhythm of tension that ensures that Pacific Drive remains as tense and enthralling as ever.

Check out some screenshots down below:

Before getting into the expansion, it’s worth outlining what Pacific Drive is built around, especially since we didn’t review it when it originally released. The main game follows a lone driver trapped inside the Olympic Exclusion Zone, a sealed-off region in the Pacific Northwest where abandoned science experiments and unstable phenomena still lurk (and are as dangerous as ever). Your battered station wagon isn’t a throwaway vehicle, but your shield, toolkit, and long-term project for survival. Each run sees you choose a route, salvage whatever you can along the way, avoid unpredictable dangers that keep you on your toes, and then return to the relative calm of your garage to install upgrades. It’s a similar structure to what you might have seen in other survival titles, but the fact that most of the game’s structure is built around driving and upgrading a vehicle makes it feel more unique.

It’s a really fun experience too, but where it really stands out is with its constant sense of tension that makes every moment behind the wheel feel thrilling. There are quiet stretches where nothing seems wrong, sure, but the moment an anomaly makes it presence known, things go out of control. The game rarely allows you to coast, and it constantly tests whether you’ve planned, observed, and prepared enough… yeah, it’s challenging, but it’s also always rewarding, with a steady sense of progress ensuring that it’s easy to find yourself completely hooked in.

“Whispers in the Woods doesn’t just add more places to explore in Pacific Drive, but also changes how it feels to play, with its eerie Whsipering Woods setting, fresh gameplay mechanics, and unsettling enemy encounters creating an unnerving sense of tension that feels fresh (and, at times, more dangerous than ever).”

Whispers in the Woods introduces a separate region that can be visited after just a few hours, but it really does feel like its own distinct Pacific Drive campaign. Instead of broken highways and industrial leftovers, the Whispering Woods is a strange, ritual-soaked forest filled with effigies, carved symbols, and peculiar structures, with the tone leaning more toward folk horror than the ambiguous sci-fi of the main game. It’s something that I absolutely loved and it fit in with the vibe of the core experience perfectly.

It also brings with it a different sense of pacing, with the Whispering Woods seeing pressure build more slowly through a gauge called the Tide, which gradually increases threat levels depending on your Synergy rating (more on that in a bit). Instead of a final sprint where you escape during a run, tension arrives in waves as new entities spawn, track, and eventually overwhelm you if you linger too long. It bring with it a slow sense of dread that feels more in-line with the type of horror that Whispers in the Woods is trying to convey, and instead of the frantic finales found during the run of the base game, you’ll CONSTANTLY find yourself feeling uneasy and worried at what might be watching you at any given moment. It’s incredibly tense, but perhaps more importantly, helps make Whispers in the Woods feel unlike anything else in the base game.

Check out some screenshots down below:

Of course, there are other changes that tie into the gameplay more directly too, with Whispers in the Woods introducing special attuned versions of car parts that influence Synergy, slowing the Tide and giving you a bit more breathing room when exploring. These can be claimed from altars or scavenged from vehicles unique to the Whispering Woods, rewarding exploration and ensuring that there’s always some way to suppress that constant uneasy tension. Things are also shook up with new threats that behave differently than those in the main zone, with new enemy types that bring fresh (and dangerous) abilities that will bring plenty of harm your way. And the towering forms that emerge once the Tide peaks? They’re goddamn terrifying. Combined with returning anomalies, this area feels more densely populated and less predictable than the base game, with a constant sense of danger that’ll not only cause major damage but also throw constant roadblocks into any careful plan you had in mind. It can be really overwhelming, so whilst Whispers in the Woods is accessible fairly early, I’d probably recommend putting a fair few hours into the base game first.

What makes Whispers in the Woods so enjoyable is how it refreshes the core loop without discarding what makes Pacific Drive so compelling in the first place. Runs feel tense and exciting, not just because of new hazards or an unfamiliar area, but because you’re constantly adapting to something genuinely unpredictable – it keeps each drive fascinating and fun. There’s a real thrill to edging deeper into the woods with a car that feels barely held together, wondering whether your latest bit of gear will save your run (or even completely sabotage it… you’ll see what I mean). And sure, some of the extra systems occasionally slow the momentum, particularly when repairs or resource shuffling interrupt the pace (you’ve got to manage different resources that can take a fair bit of unnecessary tinkering to keep on top of), but the sense of discovery and improvisation found within Whispers in the Woods are strong enough that those frustrations rarely linger. This is a really impressive expansion that shows there’s a hell of a lot of life left in Pacific Drive.

Developer: Ironwood Studios
Publisher: Kepler Interactive
Platform(s): Xbox Series X|S (Reviewed), PlayStation 5, PC
Website: https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/pacific-drive/9PNKG0WBL61W