Upon booting up the story of Knack II it becomes abundantly clear how laughable it all is to adult eyes and ears. Your eyes will bolt themselves to the unremarkable art style and drab, decrepit looking levels, and your ears will act as the portals of eye-rolling and astonished reactions from which the soppy dialogue dribbles out of the characters’ cliché quibbling mouths. Lucas- the impressionable teenaged character- orders you about and shouts motherly words of encouragement towards you without offering any assistance whatsoever. You are a handyman essentially, an embodiment of relic particles so unimportant that your “friends” leave you to do all the hard physical labour- this isn’t how functional and healthy relationships work at all-but then you are a golden Goliath, an animal meant to serve your human masters.
When SONY released the first Knack back in 2013 as a PS4 launch title, it was a fresh-faced IP but was hamstrung by its numerous shortcomings in level design, character design, voice acting, visuals, personality, storytelling, gameplay and just about every fundamental area modern videogames are measured against. Knack II does a fair job of addressing these issues whilst retaining its identity, but the assortment of flourishes lavished upon it aren’t quite enough to claw it out of the brazier of mediocrity- but damn it comes relatively close.
Maybe you shouldn’t write off the story because the characters supporting it are dire, but what goes on within is equally uninteresting and stale. Lucas’ homeland is threatened by robotic forces and an important relic falls into the wrong hands and a metallic evil is unleashed upon the city of New Haven. Might sound a vague bit interesting but brace yourself for remarkably obvious plot twists and giggling in the wake of such realisations as you ponder how basic everything is. Simple storytelling can work when the components stand apart and are fleshed out properly, but in Knack II the fragments of story serve little purpose but to transport you between chapters where you can navigate another kind of environment and there are loose secondary story threads that aren’t fully explored like the female problems Lucas’ uncle runs into- a puny anchovy sized piece of banter is all we get. And because this is a SONY triple A exclusive, the runtime of the entire story is around twenty hours spread across fifteen chapters, which is far too long since the game feels like it culminates several times over. The final boss fight is a let down too because it’s an enormous version of an enemy type you encounter in the later stages of the game. Suffices to say if you are playing Knack II for narrative nourishment, then this will leave you wanting so much more.
By now you understand that like the first game, Knack II is about as hearty as a tepid slice of buttered bread, but unlike the original, Knack II is at least somewhat capable of giving the player a good time between bouts of eye-whithering cringe, a formulaic structure and yawnsome quick-time event sequences. Levels where you are tearing apart the place as giant Knack are empowering, displaying inspiration from Godzilla and King Kong as you batter the landscape and swat enemies away while they fruitlessly attack you like a cavalcade of irritant pests gnawing at the toenails of a giant. The game will plonk you into two distinct sections where you wreak havoc whilst manning heavy machinery-one again showing off its brand of havoc in an admirable way, even if the PS4 has seen more impressive spectacles in its time. Knack II has undeniable proof there’s a good time to be had- if you can follow it along the bumpy and bouncy crevices and accept Knack II’s inferiorities.
Primarily split between three different gameplay segments throughout-brawling, platforming and puzzle solving, Knack II’s structure is simplified like its very streamlined DNA. The ding though, is every level perpetuates this structure, refusing to continuously provide the player with something consistently new or exciting to play. Yes yes you can absorb elements into Knack’s body to solve puzzles and wallop enemies, and you can switch to a tiny version of Knack to navigate areas big Knack cannot- but there’s very little else Knack II does to shake things up. Every chapter reuses its assets and enemy types that bounding across the same obsolete obstacles and fighting the same blithering bots gets tedious. If robots, goblins and hostile humans are the only sources of oppression in the game, then no wonder the overarching threat is weak-mind you some of the dinkier enemies are too timid to even try to oppose Knack, maybe they would be better off being Dobby backup dancers in a Harry Potter musical.
The beat-em-up sections are the most polished because they are fun and cater to what Knack should be all about-wrecking things. Knack II’s combat is easier to like than the first game because you can withstand excessive damage more ably, you therefore don’t feel like a fragile collection of crumbs your mother might scorn at you for because they are scattered messily on the floor. Knack II rewards precise, well timed blows and parries, making you feel like a dominant hulking behemoth. As you progress foes will carry increasingly dangerous weaponry and the bots will utilise trickier attacks to catch you off guard, so Knack II does a serviceable job of steadily ramping its difficulty to a manageable degree.
Platforming is nothing special in Knack II, rather it’s very tame and generic it is barely worth mentioning, but like the fisticuffs sections, the challenge escalates as you delve deeper into the game’s fifteen chapters. There is a tinge of nuance is shrinking down to miniature Knack to dodge and avoid obstructions the big Knack does in exactly the same way with exactly the same obstructions. Knack II might appeal to younger audience but it definitely isn’t the Ratchet & Clank it is trying to be and these sections are easily the poorest of them all.
Lastly the puzzles are quite straightforward, some require more thinking than others but the solutions never fall outside the realm of your abilities, but there is a hint system if you want to get on with the game- though it can be too eager to pop up when your mosey around for an extended period of time. The puzzles offer a fairly “meh” response because they are easy to solve and they aren’t very clever, so the sole purpose they serve is a very temporary roadblock before you get on with the more controllable portions of the game.
And what would control be without your ability to upgrade Knack?……Well he’d have accrued barely noticeable upgrades. There are four segments to the upgrade system, separated by attribute category. The first one is opened to you and steadily you’ll be able to unlock the other parts of the upgrade system by collecting streaming blue orbs hidden in boxes and absorbed after defeating enemies. At first getting access to new abilities is easy, but eventually the game imposes a toll, forcing you to fill a circular meter up to four times in order to buy a single upgrade, which is quite preposterous given the amount of grinding you will have to endure to collect every single enhancement-frankly it takes the piss. And why would Knack need threadbare upgrades anyway? This player-controlled thing that talks is massive and can destroy anything in its path-but curiously his largest and most entertaining state is left for the most destructive of levels- every other time Knack is either minuscule or medium-sized, both states make the Knack II less enjoyable to play despite the decent scrappy bits.
One certainty can be underlined when reigning judgement down on Knack II- it surpasses the first game in almost every area. By toning down and tempering its old-school leanings, Knack II glimmers with bright spots you can revel in when you are causing chaos to happen or you are given an ample feeling of dominion over your opposition. But Knack’s big burly arms fasten around his relic dabbled neck too often, presenting us with a throwaway story, insanely generic characters, lackadaisical quick-time events, an unfair upgrade system, flat visuals, rote level design, a game-breaking glitch, an overstretched runtime and a special brand of petty annoyance you won’t find examples of elsewhere. So this gush of criticism might be misinterpreted as a way of saying Knack II is sub-par, but there’s one all-important thing that makes Knack II superior to its predecessor-it has the ability to show players a good time- and despite its flurry of flaws, it remains a functional and moderately entertaining good time, and is an ever-small slice of success in this regard.
+Improves on the abysmal first outing in almost every way,
+Beat-em-up sections are a good source of entertainment,
+A couple of strong chapters highlight the potential it clearly has.
-Remains flawed in many areas despite a slew of improvements,
-Characters don’t serve a purpose apart from their presence in the underwhelming story,
-Quick-time events are poorly implemented and lack rhythm.
55%
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