Knack is back and he’s on the attack
Knack was the spiritual successor to Crash Bandicoot when Sony launched the PlayStation 4 in 2013 and now it’s back.
As a character Knack failed to capture the hearts and minds of gamers in the same way Crash Bandicoot did but that didn’t mean it was a bad game.
In fact as platform beat-em-ups go it was a solid first entry and pretty funny too.
So how does Knack 2 take the series on?
Well as a starter for 10 once again it looks and sounds excellent.
Like the original, Knack’s move set and capabilities increase as you progress and the game becomes more fun as a result, a sliding scale of difficulty and reward which makes for a very competent and polished game. The unique selling point of Knack is once again his varying size which makes for enjoyable platforming and satisfying puzzle solving along the way.
To start with things are a bit of a grind and the first levels - and the game’s boss battles - are somewhat padded out making it rather repetitive. In Knack 2 there is a big focus on co-op play. That’s great and works really well but it does make puzzles much more difficult when playing single player.
Anyone who played Knack 1 would concur that Knack 2 is most definitely an improvement on the original while keeping everything good that worked first time around.
But the repetitiveness and a lack of truly engrossing characters and storyline count against it.
However, the positives far outweigh the negatives overall.
The tempo of the play is spot-on while combat is varied enough not to become stale.
As I touched on earlier, the true enjoyment in Knack 2 is the co-op play as this is great fun and an excellent way to experience the game.
It is a clear improvement on the first game but Sony’s search for an heir apparent to Crash continues and I fear it will never be Knack.