What initially jumped out at me most playing Knack is just how basic the control scheme is. Outside of the thumb sticks, Knack only utilizes the four face buttons, and nothing changes throughout the entirety of the game. That doesnt mean playing Knack is a walk in the park though. Its actually quite the contrary unless youre playing on the Easy difficulty. Mark Cerny said it best during a recent interview when asked about his decision to add a great degree of challenge to the experience; take Crash Bandicoot for example. Those games have maybe 3 functions mapped to buttons but because of systematic level design and intricate game mechanics, theyre deceptively hard as hell. I agree and completely understand where Cerny is coming from, primarily because I mastered the classic entries in those games. Knack is once again no different. You may only have one attack button with a limited amount of special moves (a ground pound, a projectile attack, and a whirlwind attack), but you are sorely mistaken if you expect youll be running around punching out the lights of every enemy in sight. Enemies come from a wide variety of classes including goblins, robots, and humans. Furthermore, each sub-type has their designated attack pattern and fight style to learn. And remember, Knack is just as much a platformer as much as it is a brawler so dont be surprised when the game has you jumping over lasers in between homing in on enemies. Some may prefer to just call Knack an archaic exercise and be done with it but I think thats unfair. Its simply old school game design mixed in with some new school mechanics like flicking the right stick to dodge, as if youre playing Bandicoots of War. Continuing along with that statement, Knack is definitely heavily inspired by God of War and is nearly identical in all facets. There just obviously isnt any blood or quick time events. Your mileage will vary with Knack and ultimately hinges on how high your tolerance for dying is. Honestly though, theres nothing in the game that demands more than three retries. so long as you actively make an effort to learn from your mistakes. If you dont want a challenge, I still recommend trying out the game and playing on Easy, which is significantly more forgiving. Despite that, checkpoints are few and far between which definitely feels unnecessary.