The humans kicked the goblins from their homeland and now they’re fighting back. So the best men are mustered to go and beat them all into a pulp and find out how they got their hands on some advanced technology. It’s only mentioned fleetingly that the humans actually kicked the goblins out of their home and there’s no exploration of this moral ambiguity. But it doesn’t matter because luckily the ‘doctor’ has created a new weapon, Knack.
Essentially Knack is an orb-like reactor that collects small objects called relics that give Knack his form. As he finds and collects relics on his journey Knack can become a towering giant and then shrink back down again at will. Cool though that is it basically means that in some levels you will be bigger than you are in others. There’s no player control over Knack’s ability at all.
It’s a shame to have such an opportunity for player interaction and then have it basically become a tool to occasionally alter the gameplay. Being able to grow and shrink Knack to overcome obstacles would have been a much more satisfying experience and at least given a tiny amount of freedom. As it stands Knack’s form is entirely dictated by the level design.
The most obvious difference between Knack’s size is how the combat plays out. One minute you’re stomping on enemies like they where nothing and trashing buildings and the next you are trotting along duelling with tiny goblins. Unfortunately despite the fact Knack becomes stronger and slower as he grows in size so do the enemies. The combat is basically the same regardless of what form Knack is in. When he’s huge the enemies are huge and when he’s small the enemies are small.
And sadly the combat itself isn’t all that interesting either. It certainly isn’t complex enough to remain interesting for very long. Pressing ‘square’ will attack and ‘x’ will jump. You can do a jump attack. And there’s a dodge attack too using the right thumbstick. And that’s about it. No matter if you’re 3 feet tall or the size of a building.
On top of the overly simple combat there are 3 special moves Knack can perform. But only if you have collected enough sun crystals to fill the 3 icons at the top of the HUD (this can be upgraded very late in the game). The powerful special moves would certainly have made things both a little easier and more interesting. But sadly there’s a fundamental problem with using Knack’s abilities.
If you reload from a checkpoint for some reason you don’t get your ability points back. So if you use them on an attempt and then fail and have to retry you will lose the power you used. Admittedly any sun crystals you already collected can be collected again so you could basically keep restarting and pick them up until you had enough power again. But it makes you precious about using your power and there’s no use in abilities if you never use them. And I’m not going to risk wasting my sun crystals in case I need to restart.
For some reason someone decided that getting hit once or twice and having to restart at a checkpoint would be fun. Modern games are usually quite easy and there’s a good argument that we generally need more difficulty. But making enemies that consistently 2 hit kill you (that’s on normal mode, put it on hard and it’s one hit!) is not the solution. There’s a fine line between challenging and irritating and Knack is firmly in the irritating category.
So unseen enemies shoot you once or twice and set you back a good few minutes time and time again. When coming up against certain combinations of enemies you must be very careful. If you’re unlucky and they decide to attack you in a certain pattern there might be nothing you can do about it.
Aside from the unfortunate moments flicking the right thumbstick will allow Knack to dodge incoming attacks but he is vulnerable for far to long in his recovery animation. Or you might have jumped before your enemy attacks and then you can’t do anything at all. Or if you attack at the wrong time you will again be left with no chance. And you’ll be in a real world of pain if you happen to be near some scenery that stops Knack’s dodge from actually going anywhere.
If any of these things happen (and they do, a lot) you will die quickly and have to restart from a checkpoint. It often felt like the controls where unresponsive but it was really just that Knack’s animations often leave you immobile and vulnerable for attack almost constantly. It can be a very stressful experience even given Knack’s zero load times for checkpoints. Replaying a section time and time again very soon gets old.
Despite the fact Knack looks great it doesn’t quite feel like a launch title exclusive. The particles that float around and form Knack are impressive but you very rarely get to see them. I’m sure as a tech demo it’s impressive and greatly utilises the PS4 but Knack does a poor job of letting us see it. Due to the game’s animated style cut scenes look nice enough but are a little underwhelming for a next-gen title.
Knack is a reasonable attempt at returning to old school platform titles – especially where difficulty is concerned. But even if games are too easy these days there’s a reason for it. And I have not been irritated by a game as much as Knack for as long as I can remember. Hard difficulties are fine but I don’t see the need in making every difficulty as punishing as they are in Knack.
On top of that there’s nothing new or exciting in Knack at all. Once you’re bored of beating up some enemies then getting a 5 second scene transitioning to the next area there’s very little left to enjoy in Knack. The characters and plot aren’t particularly inspired and the whole experience feels very removed from the player. Tedious gameplay and a very removed experienced ensure Knack isn’t the great game I expected. It’s a shame because it could’ve been so much more.
