I’ve been keeping an eye on Capcom’s upcoming sci-fi action title, Pragmata. With a weirdness akin to Death Stranding and third person shooting, it had my curiosity, but after playing the free demo, it has my attention. I know a demo convincing someone to play a game isn’t the most shocking headline in the world, but here’s the thing – Pragmata’s puzzle-based hacking combat looks cumbersome. Putting out a free demo was a wise move, as experiencing it for myself was a revelation in terms of the game’s potential.
The kicker is that (at least in the demo) every single combat encounter begins with a hacking minigame, but the execution of that minigame is brilliantly simple. You aim at an enemy with the left trigger, which brings up a hacking grid that requires you to move from a starting point to a green box to complete the hack. A successful hack lowers an enemy’s defenses and allows you to shoot them. So, on PlayStation, while holding the left trigger to aim, the face buttons are used to solve the hack. Triangle moves up, Circle right, Cross down, and Square left. And that’s it. It was so intuitive that I felt silly for questioning it, but sometimes playing is believing, and I can’t wait to play more.
So, bravo, Capcom, for putting out a demo, which is available now across platforms if you’d like to check it out for yourself. Pragmata launches April 24th for PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S.
