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Knack – A Promising Look for Platformers on the PS4

Play the unexpected 3 foot tall hero who through the power of ancient relics can transform into a larger than life character. Without Knack mankind would be lost in their effort to turn back the invading goblin army. Explore the amazing setting and save the world with Knack. Only for the PS4, sorry Xbox fans.

When a new console system is announced, the first things that come to mind are the incredible graphics that we’re about to see or the new features that will allow us to play in different ways. With the announcement of the PS4, we immediately start to anticipate in our minds how games like first-person shooters and sports titles will look realer than ever and play in brand new ways. However, we tend to forget a specific type of game: platformers. Indeed, the quality new platformers a next-generation console can generate must not be forgotten. It’s easy to underestimate platformers and to think that fictional characters won’t benefit as much from graphic enhancements, but I believe that this next game might make you think otherwise: Knack.

Knack – A Promising Look for Platformers on the PS4 Knack is a Playstation exclusive that was recently announced for the Playstation 4. The title has a few big names behind it, namely Mark Cerny, the PS4 lead system architect, and Jennifer Hale, from the Mass Effect series, who gives a hand to the title through voice-acting. The protagonist is Knack, a small robot-like creature that has totally *epic* abilities. He's capable of building himself up through multiples body parts to become a huge monster. In the trailer, he's presented as the secret solution to an ongoing war destroying a beautiful and colorful world. But enough with the facts, simply watch the trailer above and witness what a next-generation platformer can look like. This Knack trailer proves to be more evolved visually than any of the platformers out there at the moment.

Let's just say that this graphical upgrade will be quite welcomed because we’ll all admit the fact that the same visual quality for so many years with the current consoles might've taken away our interest from platformers a bit. It's a good thing that we had simpler games like Castle Crashers and Minecraft to keep our imaginative minds going, but now, we can officially go back to enjoying bigger productions like Knack and start experiencing brand new immersive fictional worlds. So in the end, the point of all this isn't to know if you like this new Knack character or if you've fallen in love with the story or not – it's the new level of immersion that the PS4 can provide on the platformer side. Cartoonish characters will now be more convincing than ever before.

This Knack trailer seems to flow between a movie trailer and platform game trailer, which is pretty original and impressive as well. This is mainly due to the voice-acting which looks to be totally on-point. The sequence in the lab is totally adorable and I was totally sold on the story personally, despite this character looking like anything but a warrior. I hope that the action portion of the game will live up to this trailer and presentation because *for now*, what we were presented is of extremely high quality here. The fact that this game is a PS4 exclusive will probably please a good bunch of fanboys as well, although they will want more of those exclusives in other game genres to make their Microsoft rivals jealous. I like how a game like this makes Playstation look as a more versatile platform for the whole family, all while presenting something that isn't too, let's just say "corny", for those that consider the Playstation to be the "mature" console out of the three majors. Knack still seems to have an artistic and dramatic feel to it that will make it stand above the simple title of "kids game". On top of what you've seen in the trailer, Knack was confirmed to be compatible with the Vita remote-play. It seems to be a pretty cool game to bring on the go, so we certainly won't complain about that!