Pragmata

Platforms: PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Pragmata developer Capcom must be thanking its lucky stars – with the recent Artemis II moon mission reigniting excitement for all things lunar, the timing couldn’t be better for this action epic set on our nearest cosmic neighbour.

In the near future, humanity has industrialised the moon, spurred on by the discovery of lunafilament, a versatile material that can be 3D printed into anything, be it chair or skyscraper. When a moonside research base goes silent, a response team is sent in to investigate, but only one member – protagonist Hugh Williams – survives contact with IDUS, the rogue AI that’s wiped out everyone inside. Resuscitated by Diana, a unique android in the form of a young girl, the pair set about contacting Earth and escaping the base, all while avoiding IDUS’ mass-printed malevolent robots.

Bold sci-fi adventure ultimately emerges as one of the most exciting in years.

If you’re expecting a shoot-out in stark white corridors pulled from 2001: A Space Odyssey, well, you’re not wrong. Pragmata does indeed involve blasting a lot of nefarious clankers, many with truly disturbing designs – the giant distended baby one is notable nightmare fuel – but it’s also a lot smarter than your average shooter. You’ll play as Hugh and Diana simultaneously, Hugh attacking, dodging, and reacting, while Diana – riding atop his back – hacks enemy systems to create vulnerabilities, all in real-time.

Diana’s hacks utilise your controller’s right-side face buttons to move through a grid, with key nodes triggering weaknesses for Hugh to exploit. He, in turn, hops between various weapons and tools using the left-side D-pad controls, tailoring approaches to each compromised foe. It’s a mind-bending but utterly brilliant mechanic, and as you upgrade both characters’ respective abilities by spending lunafilament dropped by downed enemies at a safehouse between missions, it evolves into one that challenges players’ brains as much as their trigger fingers.

Pragmata also proves visually ambitious, shifting from that early Kubrickian aesthetic to wildly imaginative settings where entire cityscapes have been printed out, but come out warped and distinctly wrong in the AI-led process. It’s a smart commentary on the current real-world plague of AI slop, with Capcom’s actual human artists masterfully crafting deliberate, structured environments that still capture that whiff of the unnatural.

It stumbles slightly in the writing – Hugh unquestioningly accepts Diana, right after his squad was wiped out by bots, while the dialogue borders on cloying as Capcom tries to foster a pseudo-parental bond – and some of the boss battles could be a bit more inventive, but this bold sci-fi adventure ultimately emerges as one of the most exciting in years.