GameCentral plays a larger slice of Capcom’s inventive sci-fi shooter, which boasts deep combat chops and some freakish robots.
Between Resident Evil Requiem, Monster Hunter Stories 3, and Onimusha: Way Of The Sword, Capcom looks set for a massive year, but the most intriguing of all them all may be Pragmata. It’s an original IP for starters, but it’s also been gestating for some time – having been announced in 2020 – and comes with a gameplay hook which feels like Banjo-Kazooie via Vanquish.
A brief 20-minute demo has been available to everyone since December last year, and while it introduces the ropes of its hacking and shooting gameplay, it’s an early taste which leaves more questions than answers. Not only in terms of the dynamic between astronaut Hugh and android Diana, who give off some Donkey Kong Bananza energy, but in the longevity of the game’s mechanics once the initial novelty has worn off.
However, after playing for an additional 90 minutes, beyond the opening section, we’re more convinced Pragmata has the potential to be another winner for Capcom – thanks to the unique rhythm of its combat, a surprising amount of customisation, and, against all odds, some pretty likeable protagonists.
Based on the menus, we were thrown into what appears to be the game’s second major level. The public demo was housed in a generic sci-fi space station, with little to latch onto visually, but this segment is a futuristic replication of New York – one of several Earth cityscapes, alongside Seoul, Madrid, and Delhi, which have been recreated for a project on the sprawling station. It’s unclear if these other locations are also part of the game, or just narrative window dressing we found in a lore entry, but it’s a promising indication of Pragmata’s aesthetic variety.
This isn’t a sprawling version of New York where you can explore, à la Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, but a confined echo of Times Square which has come to a standstill. Yellow cabs are scattered along the derelict streets, occupied only by a handful of robots huddled over the bonnets, with side streets – and rails you can ascend – looping around to the roofs of the surrounding buildings. The view is a moment of wonder for Diana, an AI who is continuously fascinated by the remnants of the human life she’s never known, with Hugh helping to fill in the details for her along the way.
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As Hugh and Diana approach the square, a hostile AI ruling over the station, named IDUS, closes a huge gate in their face. To proceed, you must deactivate six beacons scattered around the faux New York. It initially appears as if you can choose which to tackle first, but your pathway is laid out in linear fashion, as you’re chased into a nearby building by a horde of giant, creepy baby-faced humanoids who suddenly show up.
If you haven’t played the public demo, Pragmata’s combat is combined with Diana’s hacking abilities, to make enemies vulnerable. This involves simple tile-based puzzles, which are made much more difficult by the fact that you have to complete them at the same time as aiming and shooting as Hugh.
It sounds awkward on paper, and we imagine some might find it frustrating if you’re not attuned to the dexterity required. However, as fans of rhythm action games, we found it to be a pleasing loop of rapid joystick inputs and gunplay crescendos. Imagine a simplified version of the BioShock hacking minigame but if it climaxed with a bulky shotgun blast, and a gaggle of eviscerated robots, and you start to understand the satisfaction.
This finger dance is more gratifying when you’re armed with more weapons. Hugh eventually gets his mitts on a Riot Blaster – the equivalent of a grenade launcher – along with a Charge Piercer rifle with armour piercing rounds. The latter has a fairly long wind-up if you want a fully charged shot and, when combined with the limited duration of Diana’s hacking abilities, makes for interesting risk-reward scenarios as you try to maximise the small windows of vulnerability.
Beyond Hugh’s arsenal of weapons, which also includes a defensive decoy generator for crowd control, we were introduced to various enemy tricks. The aforementioned creepy giants can sprout defense mechanisms on their face, like red metallic visors, which impede Diana’s ability to hack them. As Hugh, you have to blast them off, with each one you destroy revealing a quarter of your hacking grid. It’s possible to destroy one or two and, if you’re lucky with the layout, execute a hack, but you’re incentivised to shoot them all off to boost your chances, and so you can loop in more tiled bonus abilities you may have equipped.
When combined with environment-based hacks, like levers to trigger incinerators, and the ability to redirect incoming missiles, Pragmata’s combat accelerates into a thrilling form of chaos management. Ammo for your special weapons (i.e. anything beyond the standard pistol) is limited too, so you’re always cycling around them to best suit the situation, while trying to preserve your strongest tools for the trickiest robots.
Our only concern cropped up during a boss fight against a four-legged leviathan mech, when special weapons became more pivotal. You have to take out glowing red hacking defenders across its body so you can penetrate its defences, but its movement speed, and the large arena, means you’re largely reliant on the rifle, which can only carry four bullets at once.
As such, you spend a lot of the battle sprinting around looking for gun pick-ups, which feels intentional to an extent, but when you’re not engaged in the loop of hacking and shooting quite so frequently, Pragmata can feel like it’s harming the momentum by not being more generous with ammo.
However, there’s a chance this could be addressed in the rich suite of mods and upgrades. Throughout levels, you’ll encounter checkpoints which allow you to teleport back to a research station hub area. Here you can replenish supplies, adjust your loadout, and buy new skills with resources you’ve accumulated. On the weapons page, it appeared as if there were space for 16 guns you can unlock, so it seems like the full game will have plenty of options to customise your arsenal.
Additionally, there are different hacks you can acquire (the only new one we saw was multi-hack, to weaken multiple enemies in close proximity at once), while there are separate abilities for Hugh too. These include Critical Shot, to easily dispose of enemies at low health at point blank range, and Fast Moves, which works like Bayonetta’s Witch Time, where you temporarily slow down proceedings after completing a narrow dodge.
Alongside these skills, you can buy attachments for your suit to, for example, improve the efficiency of Hugh’s thrusters, so you expel less energy when dodging. You can also level up health and hacking attributes, or equip mods you find scattered in containers around levels. The mods we discovered increased the hacking range, while another boosted damage against foes at a long range, so we were incentivised to explore off the beaten path to track them down.
While the New York level was mostly linear, there were optional fights and collectables (including mods, safe boxes, and Earth memories) to find to fulfil a percentage completion rating – so there’s some motivation to return after the fact. At one point, by sucking on a computer chip, Diana acquires the power to break crystal-like obstacles in the environment, which suggests there might be mild Metroidvania elements too.
Beyond the litany of upgrades, the hub is also a place where you can hand Diana gifts found in levels, which sprout up like museum pieces she can interact with. We found a globe and a children’s slide, and while we didn’t have the full context of what was going on, the interactions between Hugh and Diana are more effective, and comical, than we expected based on the first demo – like if the fatherly demeanour of Joel from The Last Of Us collided with an innocent, yet still mildly unsettling version of M3GAN.
We still have some questions around Pragmata’s ability to keep the surprises coming over its duration (a Capcom rep told us it will span roughly 15 hours for most players), but we’re more convinced, combat-wise, that there’s enough mechanical complexity and customisation to keep its hybrid concept from growing stale. If you’re into quirky, offbeat action games, or simply starving for something original, Pragmata feels like it’s dialled in to satisfy your specific brand of sicko.
Formats: PlayStation 5 (previewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Release Date: April 17, 2026
Age Rating: 16
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