Beat this years ago but I'm gonna review knack now because fuck it.

There are worse games! This game is objectively pretty bad because it's content is minimal and repetitious, and it's story and characters aren't interesting. But this game has like... "childhood animated movie that wasn't very good but you love it anyway" energy. Like hoodwinked, doogal, alvin & the chimpmunks, monsters vs aliens, etc. It's cool for kids. It isn't annoying though! And it's pretty harmless.

Uhh, but this game's combat doesn't evolve and its overall pretty badly designed. Graphics are cool and the music is nice! But who cares, this game will forever live in infamy for being a terrible ps4 launch title, and being a huge meme for it's glaring mediocrity.

KNACK THE FUTURE BABEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYT

Knack is a bit of a weird game to me. On paper it’s something that genuinely feels like it attempts to accomplish nothing noteworthy in the slightest, with so many ideas present here being staggeringly mediocre and seemingly trying to culminate in the most average game ever, acting as a pseudo-tech demo that manages to not even accomplish that much to any effective degree. What truly gets me about Knack is how all of these ideas that were already as insignificant as they were, are consistently botched and made to feel bad across the board, transforming mediocrity into something that feels actively bad to play.

The content within this game feels skeletal, largely lacking in any memorable setpieces in favour of guiding the player through repetitive corridors of enemies, with the progression between each level feeling inconsequential and stagnant, and functionality rarely shifting beyond occasional types of Knack that make some small attempt at shaking things up. Unfortunately, even the most gimmicky parts of the game still feel near functionally identical and mostly boil down to different ways of taking damage over time, rather than anything that would potentially invite a playstyle that differs in any major way. Knack is also a 3D brawler/platformer that strives to dumb down both sides of its gameplay loop to painfully simple levels. Platforming is almost a non-entity, with most platforming that you’re doing being more akin to traversing battle arenas with an element a slight verticality as opposed to full fledged platforming challenges, but the combat is so basic that these slightly varied arenas aren’t enough to meaningfully change much. Knack’s moveset being as basic as it is makes it so encounters cannot have much variety to them due to how limited the player’s capabilities are, leading to a lot of visually distinct, but mechanically samey enemies that are sent at you.

Playing Knack feels like white noise that abruptly throws a high-pitched, ear-piercing noise at you from time to time, with its monotony only being broken up by cheap shots that you often can’t even see because big Knack takes up a third of the screen. Almost everything killing you in one hit doesn’t play nicely into how sluggish you’ll often feel, with a lot of situations that feel impossible to react to without dying a lot to memorise the exact route you need to take to avoid getting hit, which is an element of friction that I’d find compelling if the systems in play weren’t quite so braindead. The fact that something as simple as an actual combo meter is relegated to an unlockable as opposed to just being there is a testament to how shoehorned in the collectibles feel in general as well. For the most part, all that these will unlock for you are features that feel like they should have been part of your base kit from the beginning instead of a reward for finding secrets, especially since you’ll likely not get more than a couple of full gadget sets to begin with since the collectibles you get from hidden areas are randomised. The more you think about Knack, the worse it gets. A tech demo that was meant to showcase the power of the PS4, yet only takes any advantage of this with Knack himself, as every other character model looks somewhat uncanny and ugly, and cutscenes making me think of a Clash of Clans ad more than an actual game, being one of many bad elements to be found in a game that barely feels like it’s trying to do anything most of the time. Worse than I expected it to be, don’t play Knack.

This game is a disaster, it's a 3D-platformer with de-emphasized jumping. Do you know what that means? That means when knack walks over to a gap, it turns into a cutscene of him jumping over it. He is such a garbage mascot, you look at Mario and Sonic, their design is so simple and iconic, that even if a four year old drew 'em, you would know who they are. Knack, on the other hand, is 2,000 little rocks that sort of shape into some weird troll. The gameplay consists of walking into an empty area, hitting a guy once and walking into another empty area and doing it again and again until the game is over. There's even a part in the new one where they make fun of knack for only having 2 moves. This game was a joke and apparently Sony wasn't in on the joke. Knack 2 on the other hand...

Interesting how the game tries to play with the concept of power fantasy on its design but fails ultimately.
Knack always starts small/weak and keeps getting bigger/stronger and gaining different powers (incorporating elements) throughout the levels, which makes a compeling idea in how the player has to deal with the adversities with small-knack (bigger focus on the enemies moves and attacks, as you can die easily) and later with bigger-knack (just smash).
This constant variation in the way the player interacts with the world should be interesting enough, but rarely is, as Knack moveset is so limited (one punch and one 'special') no matter his size, that there's no difference in how the game can be played, just dodge, attack and repeat.
Some enemy attacks are more creative and can complement knack's moveset in a way that makes the combat work, but you can count these instances.
In the end, Knack is such a simple game that it's hard to not think this was halfway in development when released.

I was expecting that a console launch game directed by the lead architect on the console itself would use more of it's functionalities, half of the buttons on the controller aren't even used.

Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes

Graphically gorgeous, one of the greatest-looking launch games of all time - but rather vapid gameplaywise. I'd be lying if I said those impressive visuals didn't mostly push it over the "good" edge for me - but every other bizarre, perplexing, and/or stupid choice made here ends up making this feel more novel. There's a strange cozy atmosphere to be found here, and the sense of size-shifting is as rad as advertised. Its sequel improved upon it by nearly every metric, and I certainly won't argue that this is great per se - but it's a shame to see a pretty quirky and warmly familiar series' legacy relegated to unfunny YouTuber memes.