Breaking: Pragmata review: "Blasting and hacking in sync has me locked in – Capcom's sci-fi shooter stands strong alongside Resident Evil"

GamesRadar+ Verdict Pragmata is nostalgia wrapped in a shiny new spacesuit with plenty of impressive tricks up its pressurized sleeve.

It's good to see Capcom returning to its quirky action beat, with an impressive host of weaponry, upgrades, combat hacks, and base-building as the sci-fi adventure moves through beautifully-conceptualized biomes.

The visual and stylistic elements definitely give me deja-vu at times, and I could do without its heavy-handed themes battering me over the head, but beneath all that polished titanium sits a profound tale of humanity I'll not soon forget.

Pros +Innovative take on third-person shooters +Well-executed exploration and level design that borrows from roguelikes +Long enough to feel satisfying, short enough to avoid tedium Cons -Full weapon arsenal locked behind minigames and New Game Plus -UI and pathfinding can feel outdated -Pacing issues toward endgame stages Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you.

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Pragmata is the gimmicky gift that keeps on giving.

I keep one eye on my hacking matrix at all times, the other on the renegade robot foes slowly closing in.

An aerial attacker locks onto me, priming its laser beams, and I dodge out of the way at the very last moment.

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I can't fight back yet.

Not without hacking the robots first, bashing the face buttons on my DualSense to plot a path to a green completion node before I get blasted to pieces.Some nodes I pass through cause the machines to overheat.

Others open them up to a devastating critical shot, complete with arcade-y slow-motion animations as damage numbers explode overhead.

But none of it would be possible without a small android child who's turned the back of my space suit into her very own sniper's nest, and she's really the star of the show.Mega...child? (Image credit: Capcom)In the yawning black hole of sci-fi action shooters, Pragmata offers a rare ray of light ## Editor's Note The gaming community will surely have mixed reactions to this news. Source: [GamesRadar+](https://www.gamesradar.com/games/action/pragmata-review/)