The articlegameplay, story, development, reception
Gameplay
Knack is a platforming beat 'em up game in which players control the title character, Knack. Game director Mark Cerny describes the gameplay as "a little bit like Crash Bandicoot, and a little bit like Katamari Damacy", with "a touch of God of War in there". Players control Knack through a series of long, linear levels, journeying from start to finish, while battling enemies, such as humans, robots, and vehicles, finding secret hidden objects that give Knack upgrades, climbing, destroying objects, and completing jumping and switch-based puzzles. The perspective in which the game is played is similar to that in the God of War games.
Players only control Knack and do not control the camera. 5D angles.
Story
In a futuristic society, humanity has progressed in technological advances by harvesting the energy from Relics, physical remnants of a lost civilization. Humans are reviled by the primitive Goblin species, who years prior had waged war upon the humans but ended up being driven from their cities and forced to live in the wilds.
After a force of Goblins commandeering tanks overrun a human outpost, the city of Newhaven organizes an expedition to discover how the weaponry was acquired. Explorer Ryder volunteers, joining billionaire industrialist Viktor and his head of security, Katrina. Doctor Vargas demonstrates his creation, Knack, an organism consisting of Relics, able to control his size. Knack, Vargas, and his assistant and Ryder's nephew, Lucas, consequently partake.
Development
Knack was envisioned as the PlayStation 4 equivalent of a Crash Bandicoot title. Knack was the first PS4 game shown to the public. Sony Computer Entertainment decided to do this because they wanted to prove that the PS4's launch lineup did not exclusively consist of big-budget first-person shooters. Because of Knack's intentional similarities to the successful Crash Bandicoot series, Sony Computer Entertainment felt it would be a smart business decision to heavily market Knack as an essential PS4 title. However, some critics questioned this decision.
The initial idea for Knack was that of a character that could find items and add them to his body thus causing him to grow with Cerny explaining "Our initial concept was that Knack would maybe break down a building or a wall, and he’d incorporate the resulting bricks into his body," This, in practice, however did not work well resulting in " a giant amorphous blob of a character." After a year and a half the team realized that the character had to be designed "more intensively." Instead of incorporating random elements into him he would now instead be made of relics which allowed the developers to make a functioning character.
Reception
Knack received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to the review aggregator website Metacritic.
Steve Butts of IGN praised the concept and the hero but criticized the gameplay and the story by saying "Knack's shifting size is a great idea that never really grows into anything substantial". Tom McShea of GameSpot praised some elements of the game, such as the environments, but also criticized the story, gameplay, and "surprisingly high" difficulty. McShea said, "There's not one element of Knack to rally around, to excite you. And without that special something, Knack crumbles just like its piecemeal protagonist."
