Another factor that makes the game repetitive is the combat. In the ten to twelve hours of playthrough that you will be doing, the non-stop mashing of the square button seems never ending. You will be doing the same kind of melee attack non stop until you take down the final boss at the end. Unfortunately, the AI of the Goblins and the enemies that Knack will encounter also adds to the repetitiveness of the game where you will notice that they will do the same pattern of attacks.
The one aspect that somehow eases up the repetitiveness of the game is the items that you can collect. As you explore the vast world of Knack, you will see walls that looks like they can be destroyed. Well, have Knack smash those and what will be revealed for the most time is a treasure chest. What you will find inside these chests are a piece of gear that Knack can use but he needs to collect them all to be usable. Collect the many pieces and as soon as you collect the parts, new gear will be available for Knack to use where he can get an ability to use more combos, get relics when you take down enemies and many more. There are a lot of things that you can collect and it gives everyone something to do aside from the tedious combat and exploration. Collecting all of them isn’t possible in one playthrough, but luckily, there’s a new game plus that gets unlocked after finishing the game.
As a launch title of the PlayStation 4, many expect that the game will show the next-generation graphics and it did. Visually, the game is very colorful and it surpasses what we have considered best in Ratchet & Clank Future games on the PlayStation 3. The cutscenes and the environments depicts similarity to Pixar and Dreamwork films where the characters are nicely drawn with rich colors and environments that shows life to it. However, there’s one problem. As Knack grows in size, there will be a time the frame rate will dip making the movements of Knack looks like hes struggling to move.
In the end, Knack is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill platform game and is nothing special. The repetitive nature of Knack ruins the experience a lot as the game could have been more fun if it featured variety. Even though Knack is visually impressive, this is not enough to justify the fact that the game is too shallow for most gamers. Maybe only very young gamers will find some charm in Knack…
[Editor’s Note: Knack was reviewed on the PS4 platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]