REVIEW – The threat that looms over humans is back there, but the hero returns to face it. One of the most atypical pets of the PlayStation brand is here again to prove its worth. The challenge is huge – since we were quite disappointed in his first adventure but – this time he wants to live up to it. In this analysis of Knack 2, we tell you if he has succeeded … It is not an easy task, of course.

God of War for the bloodthirsty. The Last of Us for those who like great stories. Uncharted for fans of the adventures. Gran Turismo for addicts to speed. Gravity Rush for those who like colorful and hallucinatory fantasies … It is easy to understand what kind of market Sony wants to cover with Knack. The children’s section of PS4 users does not have too many products to play. And while it’s easy for me to hear horrified children’s voices as opponents in the online Call of Duty or GTA Online, the fact is that dedicated products can still, and should, have room to entertain them.

The surprising part is to insist on the figure of this nice monster built on pieces when his first delivery was a very discreet game. Should Sony have looked for a new brand? Is it right to continue betting on this atypical hero? The fact is that the decision shocks me because the big companies usually abandon their brands very fast to the first debacle, and this degree of stubbornness is not usual. The problem that the first part had, to synthesize it very quickly and not get bored, was to sin to be limited and repetitive. The idea was downright good, but the title did not quite get the quality expected from a PlayStation 4 video game.

“It’s for kids,” many readers told me in the analysis of the original game. As if the little ones should settle for anything, and that had to be the justification to give a higher note to a product that was not mediocre, but merely correct. Going to the case of the big screen, I remember that Pixar has managed to make films that work on two levels: on the one hand they entertain the children and, on the other, they had a series of deeper layers and worked that serve to entertain the adults who, now, want to accompany their children to the movies. Let’s see if Knack 2 works on two levels, or if it has returned to stay in the gray area of its predecessor.

Knack, knack, who’s there?

The story of Knack 2 is that of the typical threat that looms over the face of the Earth. In this case in the green form of some goblins who try to end the peace and harmony that reigns in their fantasy world. The continuation supposes the return of some familiar faces, on the one hand, those of the not very charismatic human, that, except the scientist, are not too memorable neither by design nor by attitude or dialogues. But it also means the return of Knack himself, a nice creature that has the atypical ability to break down into pieces that can be reassembled to regain its original shape or to increase its size to incredible extremes. At the end of the day that’s what really matters, since the story does not go beyond what is seen in the original and is simply there to justify a sense of the journey that is going to take us from one stage to another during something more than 10 hours that can lead us to overcome the campaign.

In that regard, the game achieves a certain component of variety that comes very well, and that solves one of the problems that we attributed to the first part: that of falling into the repetitive. And that diversity does not come from the fact that a chapter is set in a city, another in a factory or another in the desert: no, it follows that each of these places offers things that, although not entirely different, do carry out changes in the pace that will suit the set. For example, there are some mainly dumped in the fighting, others where the puzzles recover some more weight, others in which there is a strong component of platforms … It is not the reinvention of the wheel, but next to the prehistoric that seemed the scheme of original, of course, is a remarkable step forward.

Combat is one of the parties, which works well. There are different levels of difficulty to suit the type of person who is enjoying Knack 2, so there is no fear that there is little challenge for the mere fact of being an eminently childlike title (in fact, the highest level is an important challenge). However, together the checkpoints guarantee that we will always perceive a sense of progress from the fact that we will never lose too much when we die. What this time improves notably of the fights is not only that they are more complex, but there are different types of rivals that force us to use certain tactics so as not to fall in the robot fighters. Those who throw projectiles force us to approach them dodging, those who have a shield invite us to destroy their protection first with a certain movement to make them vulnerable, while there are others who may have electrical protection or many more things …

Of course, do not expect anything particularly sophisticated because there are barely three types of combinations to hit the jump or to keep the button pressed to increase the possibilities, but the game this time is very intelligent when proposing to progression. Not only derived from the classic unlocking of skills, linked to the classic experience, but also because in some levels the protagonist takes other forms, as in the first part, but with more generosity and better rhythm when alternating. Without any of them surprising, it is nice to see how Knack in the mine uses rocks to acquire a series of special abilities that facilitate the option to use them to get ahead, or that in another environment you see your body of ice and that allows you to do some things like blowing frost and thus freezing your opponents.

As you can imagine this kind of skills do not only apply to the action scenes but also apply to the puzzles. There is still a lot of resizing and miniature sneaking into a seemingly inaccessible place, triggering some mechanism and opening the door to go through our normal shape. But there are also some more sophisticated ones in which we need to move or use those cases of metal, which are left in strategic places, serves to surpass some puzzles. Of course, nothing that is too difficult or that jeopardizes to the rhythm that from Sony Japan Studio we want to keep it fast and fluid.

My Friend the Giant

Of course, we have talked about the things Knack 2 improves on, and there are also some elements in which it continues to falter. There continues to be some lazy scheme of action, such as keeping us locked in waves of enemies with any vulgar excuse. And it is also easy to get tired of some levels that seem to focus almost exclusively on the action and that put before we combat and combats without too much sensation of advance or diversion.

In addition the aesthetic section does not help, since although there are fantastic parts from the technical point of view as the movement of the pieces and their physics, there are still places in which that the game fails – where one would expect more effort from the part of a production of Sony. In particular, we miss a certain personality, style or life to a fantasy world that those characters inhabit.

In fact, and not only in this area, but there will also be many elements of inconsistency that will fill the internet of criticism. One of those problems is that we spent much of the campaign accompanied by humans who only make an appearance when they have something to say (usually some insipid and little contribution), while they suppose to entertain us from the bit of monotony while climbing, or to find out how to open some closed doors. It’s also kind of lame that they cannot be seen by enemies, while we are fighting hundreds of enemies. Yes that it is true that these things detract from credibility to the story, but given the degree of fantasy that it already has by itself, I will not be the one to complain about something so minor.

What I find more serious are things like the abuse of QuickTime Events. It is not that the campaign is plagued by these types of activities that force us to combine buttons, but we will find them in abundance. These are accompanied by spectacular sequences of acrobatics of the protagonist. However the scenes are frequently repeated, and while first some of the things that can surprise us, we will soon see it repeated over and over again in the following sequences.

While it’s an obvious improvement over the first game, but those scenes are overdone. Do I propose some tips to improve the formula? Reduce that number of QuickTime Events to those essential parts of the game to leave an impression of seeing a series of spectacular actions. Increase the number of combat moves and mix them better. Improve on that design of the platforms so that we really perceive that there is a rhythm when we chaining some leaps with others: something that allows us to move with a real agility between jump and jump and not as it is now, making us feel like an elephant in a pottery shop with either the big shape (which is supposed to be awkward) or a small one that should be much more agile.

But in this last part of the review, I do not want you to focus solely on the negative since I left the best for the end. I’m talking about the cooperative. It is underestimated in recent times how much fun it can be to be sitting with a friend or family member on the couch enjoying the same adventure, and Knack 2 knows that there is much to gain and offer, and gives the chest. It is easy to forgive some of the problems of the adventure if we have a good company at our side.

Knack 2 is a good game, but it is also a title that very little will remember in a matter of one or two years. While we do not have a problem in that this game of Sony Japan Studio does not intend to offer anything new, (we cannot ask the genre to reinvent itself year after year), however, it does not manage to offer anything memorable. In spite of this, and with the aim of finishing with an optimistic tone that the improvement of the sequel deserves, I value very positively the progress that has been made and the efforts made to achieve a cooperative that ends up being the best asset of the game.

-BadSector-

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Developer: SIE Japan Studio

Genre: Platformer

Release date: September 6, 2017