Pragmata Review

Pragmata is a third-person action shooter that feels reminiscent of the Xbox 360 era, focusing on a specific gimmick while keeping other aspects straightforward. Its strength lies in its punchy shooting, creative hacking mechanic, and challenging fights. While the storytelling, particularly the father-daughter dynamic and initial space drama setup, isn't its strongest suit, the action is compelling enough to warrant 100% completion. The game wastes no time getting players into the action. A brief introduction establishes Hugh, the protagonist, and his crew before a rogue AI turns the moon space station and its robots against them, leaving Hugh as the sole survivor. The premise involves a company resorting to massive 3D printing to fabricate moon infrastructure, which is easier to reprint than maintain. This sets the stage for a roughly 12-hour campaign. The story primarily focuses on Diana, a humanoid robot girl who becomes Hugh's partner, handling hacking while he handles shooting. Hacking is Pragmata's signature feature and is essential for progression, as enemies are otherwise impenetrable. It occurs in real-time when aiming down sights, requiring players to solve a grid-based pathing puzzle by drawing a route. Successful hacks expose enemy weak spots, making them vulnerable to damage. The more open blue spaces included in a route, the longer enemies remain vulnerable. Yellow nodes, which appear randomly on the grid, add status effects like spreading hacks, increasing damage potency, or turning robots against each other. Tougher enemies and bosses feature more complex grids with obstacles that can block or sabotage hacks, demanding players to simultaneously monitor the battlefield for dodging foes and quickly solve the hack. This juggling act can be challenging but is intrinsically rewarding when a smarter approach is found. The shooting mechanics are satisfying. Weapons like the shotgun and charge rifle deliver weighty feedback when landing direct shots on weak spots. The grenade launcher is effective for crowd control, and the stasis net provides crucial time for hacking or repositioning. The automatic rifle, unlocked later, offers powerful shots despite its wild recoil. Managing heat buildup on pistols and rifles is an annoyance, but continually swapping weapons during cooldown periods proves effective. Players categorize weapons in their loadout, limiting what they can carry. Heavy weapons have limited ammo, necessitating scavenging during fights, which adds an element of adaptation. Filling a stagger meter with certain weapons and specific hacking nodes rewards players with a powerful execution, complete with a camera cut and high damage numbers. Pragmata's level design also reflects old-school principles, featuring linear paths with plenty of rewards, upgrade resources, and bits of storytelling found in data pads and holograms off the beaten path. These often require searching the environment for hidden paths. A unique collectible, "data vapes," allows Diana to expand her ultimate meter. The game often follows a predictable rhythm of tight corridors leading to open combat arenas, which largely works but can become repetitive towards the end. The sterile space station environments, while sometimes impressive, can also become tiresome. Despite this, the game encourages replaying levels to collect all items and max out abilities and gear. The game maintains a brisk pace with intense combat encounters and memorable boss fights that cap off each level. These monstrous robots, with their unique attack patterns and ability to manipulate the hacking grid, present tough challenges and spectacle. The hacking system is also cleverly integrated into specific story moments and cutscenes, highlighting Diana's integral role in both the narrative and gameplay. Between main missions, players can engage in simulation missions at the hideout hub, which offer unexpected challenges, showcase offensive techniques, and reveal enemy quirks that can be exploited in real combat. However, Hugh's unpredictable momentum can make basic platforming in these missions frustrating, though such challenges are rare in the main levels. Pragmata compelled the reviewer to achieve 100% completion, including all simulation missions, collectibles, and post-game content. While the main campaign took about 12 hours, completing extras extended playtime to a worthwhile 15 to 16 hours. The post-game content, though not detailed in the review, is highly recommended for its fantastic gameplay and late-game bosses. While Pragmata prioritizes action, its story attempts to evoke emotion and weave a broader sci-fi drama. It starts with clever ideas about a theoretical space-faring future, extrapolating current technology to an unhealthy extreme, and the fascinating possibilities of a fabricated Earth-like place. However, much of this potential is sidelined for a more predictable narrative involving a rogue AI, a robot girl learning about humanity, and a hero saving the day. Well-written data logs and voiced holograms flesh out the backstory of the moon's employees, though crucial information about Diana is inexplicably relegated to data pads rather than main dialogue. The game aims for an emotional connection to Hugh and Diana's found father-daughter relationship. Diana's curiosity about real-world objects found in levels, and her drawings for Hugh, are heartwarming. Hugh's explanations of life on Earth help Diana understand her place. However, Hugh is a generic character, and his attachment to Diana often feels forced due to a lack of tangible on-screen development. This is disappointing given Diana's crucial role in the gameplay. Ultimately, the story functions as a popcorn flick, which is acceptable given the strong action. Pragmata is described as a "video game's video game," with its old-school level design and pacing providing a solid foundation for its satisfying shooting and unique real-time puzzle hacking system. While it doesn't excel as a storytelling powerhouse and relies on tropes, it effectively leverages lessons from modern Resident Evil games and introduces a fresh hacking mechanic. Despite minor frustrations, the combination of gameplay elements was so compelling that the reviewer was driven to complete every challenge. The reviewer hopes Capcom builds on Pragmata's "hack-and-shoot formula" in the future. The reviewer, Michael Hyam, was drawn to Pragmata after previewing it at Summer GameFest, where he was impressed by the hacking and shooting dynamic. His initial concern was whether this "gimmick" would sustain itself over a full campaign, a concern that was ultimately alleviated. He has a long history with Capcom games, listing Mega Man X, Resident Evil 2, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and DMC 5 among his favorites. Regarding the third-person shooter genre, the reviewer mentioned Brute Force, Gears of War, and Vanquish. He noted that Pragmata shares visual similarities with Vanquish but is a slower, chunkier experience, blending the "heaviness" of Dead Space or Gears with the stylized action of Vanquish. For fans of Gears of War who might be hesitant about the hacking mechanic, the reviewer advises playing the demo. Hacking is an integral and differentiating part of Pragmata that cannot be ignored; players must be "on board with that." On the topic of partner games, the reviewer stated that the dynamic between Hugh and Diana is crucial to Pragmata's story, even if it's not the most interesting aspect. He drew a parallel to The Last of Us, where Ellie's mechanical role as an NPC might be uninteresting, but her dynamic with Joel is essential to the story. In Pragmata, Hugh and Diana are codependent: Diana handles hacking, and Hugh handles shooting, making their survival reliant on each other. The evolution of their relationship and the integration of the hacking mechanic into story moments and boss fights are highlights, showcasing how gameplay concepts can serve as storytelling devices.