Like Skylanders or Traveler's Tales LEGO games, Knack

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The best and most interesting part of Knack is the character's ability to grow as he accumulates additional relics. As Knack takes damage, he loses relics, which makes him smaller and more vulnerable. He can reclaim those relics, and increase in size, mostly by busting open crates scattered throughout the levels. The bigger Knack can not only take more damage, but also has stronger attacks and has a much longer reach. Some of the more extreme changes in scale also give you a tremendous sense of perspective in power. Walking over, sometimes literally, the tiniest enemies as a giant version of Knack is one of it's finest moments.That transition where you suddenly find yourself able to wade through any and all opposition is one of Knack's best and most reliable payoffs, but even that's sometimes spoiled by enemies that can kill you in one-shot and tedious end bosses. The standard for success shifts from doing things intelligently and creatively in the early parts, to doing things perfectly and predictably towards the end.I love the concept of managing your speed, size, and strength as actual resources and there's loads of potential for intriguing dilemmas where you need to risk those assets to acquire even more. Unfortunately, whether you're big or small in this game is more dependent on what the designer wants than on your own choices and actions. While small variations in size are generally tolerated, nearly every level decides just how big or small you're going to be. Whether you're trading in all your extra relics to open a door at the end of an early level, or opening up a giant box of relics just prior to a late-game boss fight, developer SCE Japan seems scared to let us be in control of too much.This disappointment also applies to some of the alternate materials Knack can absorb. It's great to build a Knack out of mirrors, or ice, or flaming logs, but those elements are only ever available in specific situations where they're the only answer to the problem in front of you. As you play, you'll unlock special alternate versions of Knack, such as a vampire Knack who has to defeat enemies to offset a steady and persistent decline in relics. It technically adds a bit to the replayability to try levels as an alternate version of Knack, but not enough to keep bringing us back after that initial playthrough.Most of your time in Knack will be spent fighting and the range of enemies is generally satisfying, with each specific enemy type requiring a slightly different approach. Some jump and land with massive area attacks, others shoot waves of fast-moving projectiles, and still others are protected behind giant energy fields. The combination of enemies, particularly when one is a ranged fighter and the other likes to get close in, can also make for some tense tactical fights. Outside of a few special moves, there's really only one attack button, but it's varied based on how big you are, who you're fighting, and how close you are to them. You can attack while jumping to create a sort of invincible TMNT-style attack that will keep you alive through many a trouble.Sony calls Knack a platformer, but there's really very little exploration or environmental challenges. Sure, there are some jumping sequences and traps, and the ever-present secret rooms, but the succession of fighting areas are small with one obvious entrance and one obvious exit, and it's just lather, rinse, repeat as you move from enemy to enemy. You'll occasionally be allowed to use other materials to build Knack – mirrors for instance can help get past security systems – but their use is always obvious and mandatory, so the player isn't really involved at all. What makes this particularly confusing is when the weak and puny humans take alternate routes to the end of the level without any clear story reason why you didn't just go along with them and avoid all the trouble in the meantime.There are other choices that disengage the player. There are loads of short transition cutscenes where Knack jumps off a ledge, or climbs over a low wall, which is all stuff the player is usually doing anyway, so it's jarring to have the game wrest control away just to show you doing something you've already done a dozen times already. Worse are the cutscenes that show Knack doing something spectacularly cool, like destroying a munitions plant, that feel like they're cheating the player out of the payoff for an entire level.Knack also struggles with some story issues, both with regard to the plot and the overall tone. There's only one character with any comprehensible goal or discernible backstory, and he's neither the hero nor the villain, which makes it hard to engage with the content. We might be willing to give games of this genre a pass on the thin narrative, but Knack continually seems to want to tell a story that just keeps falling apart. You start off fighting the goblins, who were kicked out of the cities by the humans, but it's never really established that the humans deserve to be spared from the goblins' revenge. You just beat the crap out of them because that's what the plot demands. Knack is full of these sorts of assumptions.I'm not quite sure what to make of Knack's tone, which is just as ambiguous as the story. The little version of Knack is undeniably adorable, in spite of his always-serious Ron Perlman voice, and the big 50-foot tall version is absolutely intimidating with a strong sense of power, even though it looks distractingly like a Muppet. While the character designs are intriguing, it's hard for me to look at Knack's face and not wonder at the lack of humor or charm in the rest of the game. The whole story reminds me of the relics that make up Knack himself – some basic, recognizable forms that really don't serve any function beyond giving Knack his shape.