Enlarge / Watch out, it’s that one guy made up of a lot of little pieces.
I can’t decide if Knack should speak more or just shut up altogether. Sony’s size-changing would-be mascot has just enough personality that I find it strange when he doesn’t respond to dialogue outside of cut scenes. He blurts out the occasional vapid one-liner—like “Oh yeah” or “Ice is nice” when picking up a frost power-up—but otherwise expresses next to no interest in his own world-saving adventure. And when the hero at the heart of a world doesn’t seem to care, it makes it very hard for me to do so as well.
Lack of personality isn’t just a problem with Knack 2‘s title character. The game is shot through with science-fantasy plainness, from the muted color scheme to the generic antagonistic goblins. If you asked me to picture the most trite versions of ancient ruins, a fantasy castle, or a robot factory, they’d look exactly like the ones I trundled all over in this light action-platformer.
As if to put a point on the game’s extremely generic construction, Knack is aided on his punchy journey by “the monks.” Not “The Insert Proper Noun Here Monks,” or “The Monks of Fantasy Town Name.” They’re just “the monks.” Their existence, formation, and current members are tremendously important parts of Knack 2‘s plot about the search for a robot army-commanding super-weapon, and the group doesn’t even have a distinct name.
Historical problems
It’s not that I was expecting much. I played the first hour of the original Knack, in preparation for this review to see if the PS4 launch title really deserves to be the punchline it has become.
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