Platforming action games have always been a popular genre and there are many franchises that have found success from Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter to the still current Sly Cooper and Ratchet & Clank. Knack appeared to be the new PlayStation 4 entry that was ready to join these heroes but sadly it falls short of matching any of them. It is the PlayStation 4 game that the whole family can play, but that doesn’t mean they’ll want to.
What you’ll first notice when playing Knack is how good it looks, even though the characters have a cartoon-ish look, the levels are full of detail. There are several different locations in the game, whether you’re in a city, a forest, a military enclosure or a cave you will notice care gone into the area around you from the rocks to the leaves. When it comes to the characters themselves they do look bland, there is nothing special about the designs of the humans or their enemies the goblins, only Knack himself is impressive to behold. He is a three foot tall creature made of ancient relics a professor found and brought to life. By gathering more relics he can grow in size until he is larger than a building. These relics float towards him when he gets close and attach to him or break away into countless little pieces when Knack is hit. This effect looks excellent every time, especially when Knack uses his special moves that have the relics break away from him across the screen before swirling back to his body again. When you gather relics, the little clinking sound of them comes out of the speaker on the controller which is a nice touch. Knack can gather more than just relics too, by breaking up certain other objects he can attach them to himself and gain elemental powers. This means he will have new vulnerabilities too, his ice body will melt in the sun and wood can easily be set on fire.
Knack is best played in short bursts because the gameplay is incredibly repetitive. From start to end all you’ll really be doing is walking through a set path, fighting enemies before walking another set path and doing it again, over and over until the game ends. There are no different ways around levels or vast areas to explore and most enemies can’t be avoided, they have to be defeated before the path to the next area opens up. There are various enemies for Knack to fight with different move sets; enemies are humans, robots, goblins and some wildlife such as birds or insects. The goblins fade away when killed and the humans disappear in a blue light. Unfortunately Knack himself uses the same moves throughout the entire game. He can dodge, attack, do a jump attack or use one of three special moves. It takes very little to kill Knack, usually one or two attacks and then it’s back to the last check point to start again. The problem can be how far back that checkpoint is, for a game aimed at all ages the check points can be unforgiving, making you unnecessarily fight several rounds of enemies before you get back to where you were previously defeated and chances are you could be killed by the same enemy more than once meaning you’ll have to repeat this process. One particular check point required me to go back and forth filling a machine with metal and further on I was defeated, meaning I had to go back to the tedious process of filling the machine again. These checkpoints aren’t save points either; the game is divided into thirteen chapters, each with their own numbered parts (9-2). If you switch the game off in the middle of chapter 9-2, you won’t restart at the last checkpoint, you will restart at the beginning of 9-2 again a frustrating thing to keep in mind if you tire of playing mid chapter.
There are some boss battles to break the tedium of the regular fighting and each of these are interesting and require you to figure out the boss’ fighting pattern in order to survive and beat them. In certain levels Knack gets the opportunity to grow to an immense size, this is always a scripted event so usually the enemies will grow in size too, making the whole thing a bit pointless but sometimes it works really well and you do feel like a giant smashing through buildings and crushing enemies with one hit.
While the paths are linear, there are dozens of hidden items to find in each level behind breakable walls. Each of these is a random piece of an upgrade, collect all of one set and you can get upgrades like an extra special move bar or the ability to sense when relics are nearby. If someone on your friends list has already played the game and found this treasure then you have the option of picking what you found or what they found, this means you can collect all the pieces for a specific upgrade faster and makes it advantageous to play the game after those on your friends list. It also means you’ll know whether or not your friends have managed to find a hidden area, if no item is on display for them, it means they passed this treasure by. The free mobile app Knack’s Quest can also connect with your PlayStation 4 and help you unlock upgrades too if you’re having trouble finding them all within the game. Finding all these upgrades and getting to use them on harder modes is where the replayability lies.
The storyline is even less inventive than the gameplay. Aside from Knack, none of the characters are really likeable. A scientist, his young assistant and his adventuring uncle accompany Knack on his journey to stop the goblins attacking the humans and find out the secrets of the relics. They don’t do anything within the game but appear in fairly boring cutscenes which you have the opportunity to skip. The biggest issue here is there is no real desire to root for the humans to succeed, it’s hinted at that the goblins, who are as intelligent as humans, were forced out of their homes and into the wild by humans. It’s never said why this was done and leaves you questioning who is supposed to be the bad guy here.
What saves Knack is its local co-op two player mode which was the most fun I had with the game. At any point in the game player two can join in as a robot Knack. The camera is fixed so it doesn’t cause any confusion to add another player to the screen; if robot Knack runs off screen there is a countdown timer to get him back on screen before he dies. Robot Knack is the Tails to Knack’s Sonic, he has infinite lives. When he dies there is a short timer and then he can pop back up on screen. Punching each other won’t reduce your health, it will just knock you over and having a second player makes everything go by a lot smoother and certainly makes the game easier. Any relics robot Knack collects he is able to give to Knack. It reminded me a bit of Streets of Rage which was of course fun by itself but always more fun with another player joining in. There aren’t additional enemies to make up for player two; the game will remain at the same difficulty as if there was only one player. You don’t just have to use a controller either, instead if player two has a PlayStation Vita they can play on that instead. Robot Knack still won’t be able to walk off screen on the Vita but it is a great feature to have added into the game.
If you want a good platforming, action adventure the recent Ratchet & Clank Nexus is a much better offering. I really wish more inventive or diverse gameplay had been used in Knack. What little platforming there is in the game is very straightforward and offers no challenge. Knack is a very repetitive game but its addition of co-op gameplay means there is fun to be had and it will let you help and play along with the younger players it is aimed at.