Pragmata's blend of shooting and hacking is the most stressful new idea I've seen in a shooter in generations, and it's brilliant
We’ve said it before, here, already: Pragmata represents Capcom at its weird, experimental best. To me, it’s in line with Exoprimal and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess as a game that shows the publisher is confident to let its studios run with any ideas they have. Whilst those two may not have been commercial (or in Exoprimal’s case, critical) successes, I think Pragmata has a bigger shot at penetrating through the mainstream thanks to three key things: it’s a shooter, its main character is more of an everydad – his name is Hugh Williams, for goodness sake – and it has one of the most exciting genre hybrids I’ve seen in a while.
PragmataDeveloper: CapcomPublisher: CapcomPlatform: Played on PS5 ProAvailability: Out 2026 on PC (Steam) and PS5
In a recent demo at Capcom’s offices ahead of Gamescom, the publisher let me loose on a new demo of the game: a slightly beefier version of the Summer Games Fest demo Alex wrote about in the preview above. The main difference took the form of a boss fight against a mechanised walker that stomped all over an arena that’s also an elevator (standard) that put me in mind of Lost Planet, Vanquish, and I guess… Watch Dogs?
Like I said, it’s a really peculiar grab bag of genres glued together with what seems like a plot that would have to have more structure to be paper thin. But that doesn’t matter. I don’t think people are going to be picking this one up expecting a Hugo-winning tale of redemption and loss, to be honest. What you get with Pragmata, instead, is a very video game. Strafing around shooting a boss that looks like something from Metal Gear’s cutting room floor whilst a young girl that’s also an android hacks into its systems is peak. For me, this is a good thing.
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Everything about the demo is . Hugh wanders around gruffly, muttering about whatever as he solves simple environmental puzzles, exchanging a little bit of mumbly dialogue with Diana (the android). Every now and then, the GLaDOS-like security system wakes up some robot goons that you need to kill, and you push on. The mob enemies all have shields, so Diana needs to hack them before you shoot them. It’s pretty, with this nice clean space station sci-fi aesthetic, and a great little training ground for you to figure out the third-person shooting/hacking dichotomy before the boss.
