You're really overselling the gameplay in Knack.
I finished the game on hard and got through the game by mashing one combo. In fact, I found that the bad, under cooked gameplay design favoured that,rather than utilizing the other moves in Knack's already anemic arsenal due to them being next to useless.
Knack's dodge has shitty range and horrible recovery. Using the move in the sort of tight spots youd normally find yourself wanting to dodge out of results in you getting hit by a follow upattack more often than not. It's always better to jump out of the way.
Same with the air attack too. It's much more effective to jump in without attacking (like a safe jump in Streetfighter) then start punching when you land next to an enemy. That's all you need to do. The whole game. Over and over.
Nah, I'm not overselling anything, I'm just stating my experience. That's cool and all that you managed to get through the game on hard and the boss fights and all the various projectile based enemies without using dodge, air dodge and just stuck to the basics and they worked for you. I found the other mechanics more useful in certain situations, and yeah they're not supposed to be foolproof, exactly the reason why I wasn't using them at all times, but in situations where it was to my advantage to use them.
I'm not calling the combat super deep, or even deep, I'm saying it offers a decent amount of options, and in my experience, I had to use more than just the square square square mash. I'm getting dumbfounded at the people bringing up the objectively simpler Lego games in the topic (not saying that you brought it up, just an observation).
But God of War has more complex systems than Knack, more interesting level design, decent puzzles and platforming, and it was immensely ambitious at the time and remains known for its spectacle - all of this irrespective of difficulty.
I never said Knack's system's were as complex as God of War's. I just gave an example that while there are many options (and God of War has waaaay more than Knack) people can just revert to using square square triangle on the lower difficulties and not have to think to get through the game.
No matter how hard you crank up Knack's difficulty, the complexity remains low, even if it demands more from the player in terms of reflexes and doing the right thing at the right time. I mean, many, many video games, at a minimum, demand player decisions and reactions on the level that Knack does. That doesn't make them all good.
Again, I'm not comparing complexity of god of war to knack, I'm saying it has enough for the type of game it is, or at least more than other games in its same genre which seem to get a pass for their complexity (Lego games)
Also, a single person cannot be the arbiter of what is "fair" or "deserved" when it comes to subjective game reviews. Just accept that you diverged from the consensus. It's okay. There's no "unfairness" to speak of here. Unless you think every single person who didn't like it as much as you is being insincere in their opinion. You don't think that, I'm sure.
If you read my post, I've already accepted that I like the game far more than the general consensus would, but I do think it's unfair that this game gets judged for having simple gameplay while Lego games that have objectively simpler gameplay seem to get a pass in that department and get higher scores.
While I personally may rate the game a 7.5 or 8 due to having so much fun with it, I believe it should've passed at least a 60 metacritic. I'll continue to think it's unfair unless from now on any game that releases with similar faults starts scoring that low.
With that said, I don't even know what I'm doing in this topic. It's exactly because of things like this I stopped giving weight to metacritic scores. I wouldn't have gotten to play this game if I was stuck up on the score, it seems like a shame that people avoid games based off the score. I guess maybe I'm in here because this is probably the only game where there' a big gulf between how much fun/enjoyment (which was a fair amount, not saying it's a great game or anything like that) and the metacritic score that it received.
A fair amount of games I consider like 9s and 10s in my books gets like high 70s and low 80s on metacritic, have no issue with that, But a game that I consider like a 7, getting a low 50, seems like a bigger deal to me for some reason, despite the gap in personal perception vs score being similar. Funny how the brain works. Oh well, with that I'm done. I've said what's needed (and probably have said this a few times in other knack topics as well, LOL).
The game's not good enough to waste more time talking about it/defending my opinion of it.
