Taking a little break from Crimson Desert at Chapter 9, waiting for some additional patches to release and hopefully smooth over some jank in the latter chapters, I decided to give Capcom's recently released new IP, Pragmata, a try.
So, Pragmata is a third person shooter, set on a large moon base. You play Hugh, an astronaut sent, along with his crew, to perform some maintenance there. But, stop me if you heard this one before, once he gets there it turns out that the base seems to have been taken over by a hostile AI that promptly takes out everyone except him. Good thing he meets D-I-0336-7, a highly advanced android shaped like a little girl who can not only keep him company with her precious demeanour, but hack the bases technology, primarily the hostile robots that serve as enemies. Successfully hacking them not only damages them, but exposes their weak spots for Hugh to shoot. Which is the games central gameplay hook, y'see.
With an enemy in your crosshairs, you perform a little Snake style mini game to hack with your face buttons, while using your shoulder buttons to aim, dodge and, well, shoot. This might sound confusing but it's actually quite intuitive. I'm only about two hours into the game and in the second level but so far I find the gameplay fun enough. It's not quite as fast paced a shooter as more regular entries in the genre are, enemies feel not quite as aggressive but it's nevertheless very smooth and the game compensates for the slower enemy movement by making them do a pretty decent amount of damage.
Apart from it's somewhat experimental approach to TPS combat, Pragmata has a couple more things going for it. There's a character progression system and a variety of addons that to customize your gameplay style somewhat, both accessed through the hub area. The level design so far is... good, in sort of a Resident Evil 4 way. The game's not exactly a Metroidvania (mind, I say thar as someone who'd hesitate to even call the last two Metroid Prime games metroidvanias), but the levels have little side areas with collectibles and text logs to incentive exploration, combat challenges, they loop back in on themselves... it's not just strictly linear level design.
It also looks and sounds nice, certainly. It's all very sleek and futuristic, in a way I enjoy. Supported by what appears to be the games big central plot device, the fantastical material called Lunafilament, which can be used to manufacture just about everything you could want, using the station's printers. Which means that not only do objects but entire environments from earth show up, manufactured by an AI to the best of its ability, which isn't very great. Meaning that you will, for example, get to visit a glitchy replication of New York City's Times Square to offer some variety from the sterile, steely corridors.
On the writing side, the game seems fine, if, at this point, not doing anything terribly unorthodox. Straight up, I'm just not the audience for, to paraphrase Yahtzee "Hairy Dad Games". These games tend to take for granted that the player has an inherent sympathy for children and... I don't know, this just doesn't work on me. I don't have anything against children or anything. And I don't have anything against Diana, I guess. But the whole "isn't she just so precious" shtick the game keeps playing to get me to get attached to her just isn't really doing it for me. And I don't really relate to Hugh going full dad mode from basically the moment he met her. I don't know, I can take their dynamic just fine for what it is, that's not the issue but I'm not expecting to get particularly emotional over the big, third act tearjerker moment we all know is coming.
That said, all the little faux Hideo Kojima-ism's at the hub are fun. You can give some toys to Diana she'll play with whenever you go back there. Sometimes new facilities unlock. There's a comic relief robot. New dialogue between Diana and Hugh almost every time. It does a good job giving you reasons to go back there, besides upgrading your character.
So, so far, Pragmata's pretty decent. It has novel core gameplay, pleasant art direction and, so far, serviceable writing. It's always nice to see a new IP and I do hope this one will be able to establish itself successfully. It's nothing that blows my mind, in any particular way so far, but I am enjoying my time, I find the gameplay fun and the setting visually interesting.
So, Pragmata is a third person shooter, set on a large moon base. You play Hugh, an astronaut sent, along with his crew, to perform some maintenance there. But, stop me if you heard this one before, once he gets there it turns out that the base seems to have been taken over by a hostile AI that promptly takes out everyone except him. Good thing he meets D-I-0336-7, a highly advanced android shaped like a little girl who can not only keep him company with her precious demeanour, but hack the bases technology, primarily the hostile robots that serve as enemies. Successfully hacking them not only damages them, but exposes their weak spots for Hugh to shoot. Which is the games central gameplay hook, y'see.
With an enemy in your crosshairs, you perform a little Snake style mini game to hack with your face buttons, while using your shoulder buttons to aim, dodge and, well, shoot. This might sound confusing but it's actually quite intuitive. I'm only about two hours into the game and in the second level but so far I find the gameplay fun enough. It's not quite as fast paced a shooter as more regular entries in the genre are, enemies feel not quite as aggressive but it's nevertheless very smooth and the game compensates for the slower enemy movement by making them do a pretty decent amount of damage.
Apart from it's somewhat experimental approach to TPS combat, Pragmata has a couple more things going for it. There's a character progression system and a variety of addons that to customize your gameplay style somewhat, both accessed through the hub area. The level design so far is... good, in sort of a Resident Evil 4 way. The game's not exactly a Metroidvania (mind, I say thar as someone who'd hesitate to even call the last two Metroid Prime games metroidvanias), but the levels have little side areas with collectibles and text logs to incentive exploration, combat challenges, they loop back in on themselves... it's not just strictly linear level design.
It also looks and sounds nice, certainly. It's all very sleek and futuristic, in a way I enjoy. Supported by what appears to be the games big central plot device, the fantastical material called Lunafilament, which can be used to manufacture just about everything you could want, using the station's printers. Which means that not only do objects but entire environments from earth show up, manufactured by an AI to the best of its ability, which isn't very great. Meaning that you will, for example, get to visit a glitchy replication of New York City's Times Square to offer some variety from the sterile, steely corridors.
On the writing side, the game seems fine, if, at this point, not doing anything terribly unorthodox. Straight up, I'm just not the audience for, to paraphrase Yahtzee "Hairy Dad Games". These games tend to take for granted that the player has an inherent sympathy for children and... I don't know, this just doesn't work on me. I don't have anything against children or anything. And I don't have anything against Diana, I guess. But the whole "isn't she just so precious" shtick the game keeps playing to get me to get attached to her just isn't really doing it for me. And I don't really relate to Hugh going full dad mode from basically the moment he met her. I don't know, I can take their dynamic just fine for what it is, that's not the issue but I'm not expecting to get particularly emotional over the big, third act tearjerker moment we all know is coming.
That said, all the little faux Hideo Kojima-ism's at the hub are fun. You can give some toys to Diana she'll play with whenever you go back there. Sometimes new facilities unlock. There's a comic relief robot. New dialogue between Diana and Hugh almost every time. It does a good job giving you reasons to go back there, besides upgrading your character.
So, so far, Pragmata's pretty decent. It has novel core gameplay, pleasant art direction and, so far, serviceable writing. It's always nice to see a new IP and I do hope this one will be able to establish itself successfully. It's nothing that blows my mind, in any particular way so far, but I am enjoying my time, I find the gameplay fun and the setting visually interesting.
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