[COLUMN] They Don’t Make’em Like Pragmata Anymore | by Marty Sliva

There is a lot going on in Pragmata at any given moment. One minute I’m aboard a slowly rising elevator, fending off waves of enemies who impede my progress upwards. Next, I’m trying to get the highest rating across each VR Training Mission, evoking heavy shades of similar challenges in Metal Gear Solid. Soon after, I’m fighting a massive mechanical beast in an artificial recreation of New York City’s Times Square. And shortly after that, I’m adding new tchotchkes to my hub, personalizing the small space on the surface of the moon that I’ve come to call home. 

All this is to say, Capcom’s Pragmata is a video game-ass video game, and one that’s quickly become one of my favorites of 2026 thanks to its neat puzzle-box combat, creative suite of environments, and its ability to tug on my heartstrings in simple, effective ways.

You play as an astronaut named Hugh, who becomes stranded on a lunar research center and has to contend with a rogue AI who has control over all the robots on the station. Well, almost all of them, because along with Hugh is Diana, an android who has the ability to hack into anything aboard the base, including the heart of that big softy Hugh. It’s up to the two of you to explore the moon, survive the threats, solve the mysteries, and hopefully make it back home in time for supper.

In Pragmata, combat has three core pillars that you’ll be constantly engaging with in every encounter. The first is your placement in the environment, assessing enemy threats, avoiding any attacks, and scrounging up supplies scattered across the battlefield. Alongside this pillar is the core gunplay, where you’ll cycle through your growing arsenal to choose the right firearm or piece of equipment for the right moment, whether that’s unloading the clip of your pistol and waiting for it to slowly refill, charging up a railgun for a single high-impact shot, ensnaring a group of baddies in an electrified net, or sending out a fleet of tiny drones to deal set it and forget it damage.

But white this would describe the combat of hundreds of shooters, it’s the third pillar that separates Pragmata from anything else I’ve played, and that’s its hacking component. Whenever you aim down sights at an enemy, a grid appears that you need to navigate in real time using the four face buttons. Hitting a green node on the board will cause a successful hack, but passing through other specific squares on the way can result in dealing extra damage, downing a weak foe, or causing various status effects like the enemies sharing damage with others nearby, freezing them in their place, or even causing confusion and turning them against their fellow robos for a brief period. 

These hacking boards become more complex as the game goes on, especially when bigger enemies and bosses enter the fold. And while at first it felt a bit like trying to rub your stomach and pat your head at the same time, I quickly started to speak Pragmata’s multitasking language. By the time I reached its lunar facsimile of New York City – an area that’s been shown off ever since the game was first revealed back in June 2020 alongside the reveal of the PS5 itself – I was completely sold on this unique and entrancing loop.

That lunar recreation of NYC is filled with strange Inception-esque geometry, a wealth of well-designed combat encounters, tons of side paths to explore, neat story bits that give context to the lunar mission, and a bunch of cute nods to other Capcom properties. It quickly became an early contender for my favorite level of 2026, and one that I plan on making a whole video about, so keep an eye out for that.

It was around this time that everything about Pragmata started locking in, and my appreciation for the game turned into a kind of reverence. The game never overstays its welcome, and your journey across the lunar space station is constantly taking you through different biomes with distinct visuals, unique challenges, and new wrinkles. It was also around this time that the game’s excellent progression loop stepped to the forefront, and made it genuinely difficult to put down.

Exploration earns you resources that you can use to upgrade any number of things like your weapons, core stats, hacking abilities, and combat modifiers. These allow you to press on further into environments, tackle bigger and stronger enemies, and in turn earn more resources to once again continue to build up your character. It’s a simple cycle, but one that works extremely well not only because every upgrade feels like it makes a tangible improvement to your performance, but because you’re constantly encouraged to go back to your hub room and relax a bit with Diana.

With Diana, Capcom has seemingly weaponized the ability to pull on our heart strings. The android is presented as a cute, curious, and precocious kid who finds beauty and wonder in every new discovery. This includes the hidden REM – Read Earth Memories – tucked away throughout the levels that you can take back to your base and use to deck the place out, bringing swingsets, skateboards, and campfires to your once-antiseptic hub. I love how the base starts out white and spartan, but slowly has life added to it thanks to your progress through the main game. Each time I visited, it felt like I had a new element to add, from the aforementioned REM, to new costumes to deck our duo out with, to a growing roster of VR Training Missions that feel ripped straight from the original Metal Gear Solid.

At the top I mentioned how they don’t make games like Pragmata anymore, but that’s not entirely true. What I mean is that it seems like we only get one or two games each year that feel like this – throwbacks to the kinds of games that felt commonplace in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 generation. New AAA IP with a strong creative vision and unique gameplay hooks, but still nestled firmly in a familiar single-player genre. These games seem to exist in a kind of cryostasis, removed from the influence of industry trends and whims of the modern era. Over the past few years, I’d populate this list of games with titles like Hi-Fi Rush, Wanted: Dead, Kunitsu-Gami, Slitterhead, and this year’s Romeo Is a Dead Man. And I’d absolutely add Pragmata to that list.

Between Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata, Capcom is kicking off 2026 on an absolute heater. And while I’m sure its zombie epic will garner way more sales and louder conversations, I haven’t been able to tear myself away from Pragmata, and I have a feeling that I won’t be the only one. Because how else are we going to unlock the super-secret ending that reveals the game to be a stealth Mega Man reboot?