How a change in difficulty makes Knack a different game (preview)
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Every new console needs a mascot game. One of those “E for Everyone” titles that families can huddle around. It stars a character that can be an ambassador for the system. Ideally, the mascot game shows off the power of the device while being accessible to players of all skill levels. Doing the former is fairly straight-forward, but the latter takes some finesse.
And that’s the position Sony’s Japan Studio is in with Knack. It’s a platformer-brawler that will be released at the PlayStation 4′s launch. It’s a good-looking game with a title character that shows off what the system can do handling dozens of swirling polygons in its title character. As I wrote before, it features a social element and Katamari Damacy-ish traits. There’s even a hinted at companion app.
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CHALLENGE IN CHALLENGE: But the challenge that game director Mark Cerny and his team faced with Knack is making it accessible to different audiences. He says there are two demographics. “One is the core gamer drawn to mascot games,” he said. “It’s designed to be challenging.” The other is for novice players who have never picked up a controller in their life. “Easy mode is a different game,” he said.
I had some hands-on time with Knack and the change in difficulty gives the project two distinct feels. On Normal, it’s comparable to Bayonetta, where players have to read an enemies moves and react quickly, pulling off a bullet-time dodge and three-button combos. It can be punishing and players will die A LOT. On Easy, the game feels more like a Skylanders title. Enemy movements are slower giving players a window to attack. Obstacles aren’t as punishing.
“Making a game easy and still making it fun is hard to,” Cerny said. With that in mind, the developer went to great lengths to figure out how to overcome the intimidation factor of a controller. One of the things, Japan Studio did was create a custom DualShock 4 that was 1.5 times bigger than the consumer one. It was meant to give developers an idea of how big a controller would be to a child. From there, they discovered that the shoulder buttons would be too far to reach and designed the game so that it used the face buttons and analog sticks.
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CO-OP MODE: Another area they worked to make the game more accessible is by adding a co-op mode. A second player can drop in and take on the role of Robo-Knack. The character can attack and perform moves just like the single-player, but the big difference is that Robo-Knack has a support role. When Knack is low on health, Robo-Knack can offer up some of its relics and heal him. (If you didn’t know, Knack is made up of relics and every time he is damaged, he loses some of those pieces. If he gains more relics, he gains mass, power and health.)
On the hard-core side, there’s a hard mode and another level of difficulty above that. In those modes, Knack can die via one-hit kills, and players will have to figure out how to use the dodge move more often to get in range for attacks. There’s more strategy when it comes to battles. In addition, there are variant Knack characters that players can unlock. For example, collect 15 ruby relics and players can access Vampire Knack, which lets players get health every time they eliminate a foe, but at the same time, they have a weakness to sunlight.
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