Knack's harder difficulties reminiscent of classic PlayStation platformers

Don't let Knack's cartoonish appearance fool you. According to creative director Mark Cerny, the harder difficulty will challenge you in the same way certain PlayStation classics once did.

Ozzie Mejia

September 4, 2013 5:00 PM

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Knack creative director Mark Cerny has an affinity for old-school 3D platformers, having worked on games like Spyro and Crash Bandicoot. It's a feeling Japan Studio is trying to capture for their upcoming PS4 game.

"So there's really two types of target users for Knack," said Cerny on the PlayStation.Blog. "One is people who enjoyed playing Crash Bandicoot or Jak & Daxter back in the day and are looking for that kind of challenge again. And those games were very difficult, so when you play Knack on a hard difficulty setting, it is a tough game."

This isn't to say the game will be inaccessible to beginners. It is a "purposefully simple" game, after all. The full discussion can be seen below. Knack is set to launch along with the PS4 on November 15.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?