When I played through Pragmata back in April, it took me a good 12 hours to beat Capcom’s sci-fi shooter. I thought that was a fairly fast time, but leave it to speedrunners to make me feel inadequate. Pragmata made its Summer Games Done Quick debut this week, where a speedrunner completed the game in just under 78 minutes.
Summer Games Done Quick is an annual charity event where players come together to beat games as quickly as possible. This year’s show, which has already raised more than $500,000 for Doctors Without Borders, has been thrilling thanks to some record-setting runs. The Pragmata run is a must-watch highlight, though, if only to see how fast players have broken a game that was released mere months ago.
The run, performed by a player named Oh Snap, followed a standard playthrough of the game from start to finish. Oh Snap performed a few tricks to skip chunks of levels. There’s a “beach skip” that saw protagonist Hugh falling through the map, some geometry manipulation that turned the game into a platformer, and some sequence-breaking moments where Oh Snap simply jumped around crystal barriers before getting the ability to shatter them. The bulk of the time saved, though, came down to pure skill.
The first thing you’ll notice is the hyperspeed at which Oh Snap is able to complete hacking grids. Even more impressive is that he didn’t do so thoughtlessly; he still took great care to avoid picking up Hacking Nodes until he needed them, so there’s a lot of on-the-fly decision-making happening in those split-second mazes. He’s also very particular about when he returns to the hub to craft some key upgrades. He even quits out to the main menu in order to teleport back to the hub rather than using the slower escape ladders in levels.
The real masterclass can be seen in the boss fights. Oh Snap positively obliterated robots that can take a lot of time in a casual playthrough. For instance, check out his battle against The Creator in Mass Production Array — but don’t blink, or you’ll miss it. The fight lasts about 50 seconds, with the giant bot barely getting to move. The feat is thanks to Stasis Net, double Decode mods, and a powered-up Charge Piercer.
There are plenty of jaw-dropping moments like that throughout, all of which highlight how deep Pragmata’s shooting actually goes. You can get it down to a science, optimizing your hacking grid routes and fast-swapping your weapons to melt enemies. It will convince you that Pragmata isn’t a one-note action game, but a big-brained shooter with a high skill ceiling.
Even if the speedrun sounds intimidating, you should still give it a watch just to hear the wealth of dad jokes sent in by donators. You can catch some total groaners like “Where do astronauts keep their food snacks? In their launch box!” Hugh would be proud.
