Pragmata review

When Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog" starts playing, do you wince or start banging your head while applying extreme stank face? I think your answer will reliably predict how much you get out of Pragmata, a game that simultaneously manages to be a very familiar homage to Xbox 360-era linear third-person shooters and one of the most entertaining adventures I've played in ages. Like Capcom's other recent left-field one-offs, it feels like a cult classic in the making, and buddy, I'm jonesing for the Kool-Aid.

You play as Hugh, an astronaut stranded on a collapsing moonbase crawling with hostile robots, and Diana, a mysterious and powerful childlike android who doesn't remember why she was created. Diana can remotely hack a heat-seeking bomb to fly back into the drone that shot it out, but doesn't understand stuff like birthdays and sunsets. Hugh, on the other hand, is way out of his depth but quickly takes on the role of her father and protector (even as Diana points out she could easily be rebuilt from spare parts).

He's eager to teach her about Earth and how humans have more inside them than guts and bones, she's eager to learn, and they cultivate a shared homesickness in-between sick robo-shootouts.

I sort of love the pair, even if Hugh is kind of… vanilla? He's not got a lot rolling around in-between his ears aside from a burning love for humanity and a duty to his adopted daughter. He's aspirationally simple in a 'dudes rock' sort of way, always saying stuff like "What the heck?" and "Hell yeah!" I wish the game did a little more showing me why humanity is great instead of letting Hugh tell Diana in a blunt, prosaic way, but the two's enthusiasm proved infectious.

I thought all I wanted from this game was some mindless shooting, but before long I yearned to see this duo make it home safe.

AI am walkin' here

The story doesn't go in any surprising directions, and big bad IDUS (the malicious station computer) doesn't have the charisma nor the one-liners to join the pantheon of great evil AIs like GLaDOS, AM, and SHODAN. But Pragmata's rudimentary plot is complemented by arresting music and presentation. Visually, it feels like a more successful execution of Starfield's proposed "NASApunk" aesthetic, juxtaposing the gleaming spires of hope I associate with space exploration against ugly spikes of 3D-printed filament and a tinge of mecha flair.

It speaks to the moment science is having right now, where proponents of real progress share space travel with ethically empty technocrats and businessmen. Pragmata's impressively varied stages left me awash in my own malaise regarding the future: an overgrown terrarium populated by holographic animals, a desolate crater ruled by an automated driller worm gone awry, and even what's basically an AI-slop imitation of New York City, complete with motionless taxi cabs melting into the sidewalk.

Wherever the in-game Delphi Corporation uses AI to recreate what arose on Earth organically, whether through evolution or human collaboration, the result is an abortive house of cards—Diana embodies the opposite instinct despite being artificial herself, and nurtures her own budding humanity. The story may have been penned before generative AI became such an all-encompassing problem for us terrestrials, but it remains resonant.

Its critiques of reckless technological advancement aren't subtle—the lunar installment's towers are literally labeled "Babel"—but taking on this sleek, AI-powered hellscape while trying to protect a lost child who longs to understand why the ocean is beautiful hit me somewhere deep anyway.

Between fights, the game offers rest stops in an upgradeable shelter where you can restock, upgrade, and gaze at digital clouds through huge LCD screens. Diana runs off to color in a reconstructed facsimile of a child's play area, occasionally cajoling Hugh to play hide-and-seek. In these fleeting breaks I felt mournful, dispirited by the AI-poisoned future we are handing our children in the real world. Poignant moments like these help Pragmata's narrative punch above its weight.

Hack and shoot

Unexpected pathos aside, the shooting is the real headliner and I fell head over heels for it quickly. The weapons sound off with satisfying snaps and roars, but they probably wouldn’t be enough to carry the game on their own—thankfully a novel hacking system sits atop the core action, and it's the ace up Pragmata's sleeve that makes the whole package a winner. Hugh's crummy 3D-printed guns don't do much on their own, but Diana can hack enemies from afar to expose their gooey weak spots—you aim at an enemy, navigate a small tile maze with a controller's face buttons or by holding down a side mouse button and using the cursor, then blow them away as normal.

There's a real 'walking and chewing gum' aspect to it: the most dangerous thing in any encounter was my own tunnel vision. It's easy to get hypnotized by the hacking UI and stop looking out for enemy attacks, but forego hacks and your bullets turn into marshmallows. As the game goes on you get upgrades and guns that encourage you to push your multitasking further—when I was up to the challenge, the game rewarded me with delightfully absurd damage numbers.

On a given hack screen you can always just beeline for the destination tile and open up your foe. But if you take a longer route through special nodes that show up randomly once equipped, you can pile on extra effects: more damage, armor shred, friendly fire, immobilization.

Just as these nodes change how you shoot, the guns change how you hack, like with sticky bombs that shrink the hack screen so you can complete it faster, or a decoy gun that lets you distract especially dangerous bots.

It's a game of spinning plates and keeping calm, not unlike blasting a necromorph's limbs off in Dead Space. Guns are disposable and thrown away once you run out of ammo, so I was always adjusting my approach either because I had no other weapons to choose from or to better handle a particular bot. Certain enemies have huge hack screens that require extra attention, while others put up shields that wall off different corners of the hacking UI.

The sense of frantic improv combined with the thunderous, crunchy sound effects made for one of the best-feeling shooters I've played in awhile—instead of Pragmata reminding me of the endless big-budget adventures I've played with a chatty NPC companion, I truly felt like I was inhabiting two characters.

In brief sections where Diana (and as a result, the hacking system) were inaccessible, it suddenly felt like I was drumming with a hand tied behind my back. It cemented their bond into gameplay in a way that I adored.

Space oddity

Once you find the rhythm, it's euphoric. The sheer juice factor of triggering slow-mo with a last-second dodge into a panicked hack followed by a shotgun blast to the face takes Pragmata from a comforting throwback to an all-original action game.

In later stages where I had to kite a variety of enemy types, jet boost around to avoid ground hazards, swap guns as I spent them, aim, and hack all at once, I was impatient to pick another fight as soon as the last one ended. The game is never frustrating or even particularly hard on standard difficulty, but you always know you can be more efficient, and that feeling speaks to the prominent nook in my brain that loves pinball and Bayonetta.

Every time combat ended I wondered about what little optimizations I could have made, and as the game added new status effects to keep track of and new weapons to toy with—as well as the capability to lug around half a dozen at once—it hit me that I was going to want to replay this game as soon as I beat it.

Pragmata seems well-suited to this instinct, since the campaign is pretty short: I beat it in under 10 hours and I wasn’t exactly rushing. But there's a delectable suite of postgame challenges, including New Game+, an endgame mission mode that has you returning to cleared areas to unlock new costumes and weaponry, and "Lunatic" difficulty for the lunatics out there. I'm dying to see a speedrun of this game—the manageable length and sky-high skill ceiling make it a prime candidate.

Pragmata's final climactic set piece doesn't live up to the fun of all that came before it, and it could have used a bigger variety of enemy bots (especially boss fights, of which there are precious few). It probably could have been twice as long and I'd have still come back for the postgame. I wish IDUS had even one memorable line. Despite my minor gripes, Pragmata is a gorgeous and polished bite-sized delight that plays the hits with a flavorful twist that had me subconsciously solving tile puzzles in my sleep. Lucky for me, I love the hits.