Knack (PS4) Review

It's been such a long time since I wrote a review for something, so here's my review for PS4's launch title "Knack"

We're at war with Xbox One the Goblins. Can Knack save the humans? 

You begin your journey in the game's tutorial as a demonstration by Doctor Vargas (Doctor for short) showing a group a resolution for against the Goblins and their highly advanced weaponry. Knack, being the Doctor's intellectual creation from ancient relics and the name he (Knack) has given himself,  has the ability to absorb relics. Absorbing the relics increases the mass of Knack making powerful more than he was. Along with strengthening himself, the life meter grows as he absorbs more relics. Knack can and will at times use his ability to abandon these relics to travel where he couldn't. Obviously, he then becomes less powerful and weaker. With the only ability to increase and decrease his size, there's very little of what Knack can do

With Knack not being able to do much of anything with his ability, the controls for this game are very basic. You have simple a three-button attack combination Knack is able to perform by rapidly pressing the square button. He's also able jump and double-jump to get to areas needed. As you progress through the game, you're collecting energy from these crystals. Depending how much energy you have collected determines if you do one of three special attacks. Depending on what enemy you're facing in the game determines your strategy throughout the areas

You're more than likely will cause Knack to die. There are surprisingly a good handful of variations of enemies, but with so many chapters and sub-chapters, they become quite repetitive. Depending on the size of Knack determines what enemies you face. Sometimes those enemies are just plain ruthless if you don't know what attacks they do. Luckily, they established many checkpoints for trial and error. There aren't any lives nor game over screens, so this likely will make it feel less challenging. Sometimes collecting the crystal energy and dying is the best strategy depending oh how many and what kind of enemies you're facing. Many times I died out of carelessness as I was played it on hard difficult for the challenge. Some of the enemies would attack all at once and there were limited ways to escape around them. On the topic of escaping, there wasn't much place to escape to

When playing Knack, the areas you're placed in are extremely linear. I can't make that much clearer. There's truly no exploration going on at all in this game. If you love exploring, this is definitely not for you. The only true exploring you can do in the game is trying to find hidden chests throughout the story. These chests are most of the time easily to spot. They're mostly hidden behind a wall that looks like somebody repaired after the Kool-Aid man jumped through. The chest contains either parts to a gadget or gems. The gadgets if all the parts are found, will help you in the next playthrough by telling you were certain stuff is or increasing Knack's damage. The gems if collected enough provides Knack with alternate costumes.

Knack does have that classic arcade feel, but after an hour or so I felt the repetitiveness striking me bored. The story itself isn't dull, but the voice acting and the Pixar like cinematics made me feel tired. The gameplay itself was colorful and you could see that 1080p graphics you would want from a PS4 game. However,  The story plot had fore-shadowing so easily predictable, it felt like spoilers. If the game's story and area were shorter, then it would be a pretty decent game. There were thirteen chapter for the game and I felt it was eight chapters too long.

Being a PS4 launch title exclusive, I felt it was below average and that made me disappointed. The game was great looking, but stopped being a great playing game after the fifth chapter. I give this score a 2.5/5 (score based upon GameRevolution.com's grading scale)

- Repetitive enemies
- Long story
- Very linear
+ Great visuals
/ Simplistic controls
/ Pixar like cinematics