I love it when Capcom experiments. It’s true that with a staple of franchises and characters like those it has, there isn’t all that much pressure on Capcom to experiment. It has most of what it needs to make that corporate profit line go up, in truth. But every now and then the company nevertheless experiments with something new – and usually, backed up by those successful franchises, the company can strike gold.
Pragmata
- Developer: Capcom
- Publisher: Capcom
- Availability: Releases in 2026 on PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
My favourite Capcom experiment of all time is undoubtedly Dead Rising. We shouldn’t take that Dead Rising came to exist for granted – with one successful zombie IP, Capcom had little call to create another. But it did, and in differentiating itself from Resident Evil we ended up with a mechanically glorious offering. Pragmata, I think, could very well be that sort of Capcom experiment. More Dead Rising than Exoprimal, so to speak.
After years in what certainly looked like development limbo, Pragmata has emerged as a third-person sci-fi shooter where a bloke in a spacesuit (Hugh) stomps around smashing up androids and solving the odd environmental puzzle to progress. Fun enough, but certainly like a hundred other video games out there. There must therefore be a twist – and Pragmata’s is delightful.
Basically, it’s a puzzle game. The enemy robots I encounter in a 20-minute hands-on demo all have some sort of shielding that renders bullets useless. That’s where Pragmata’s little girl sidekick Diana – who is actually (of course) an android herself – comes in.