RMJ takes it from behind (Plok (PC))

Member Name: adidadi_young

Product:	Plok (PC)
Date:	19/10/01 (286 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brilliantly enjoyable, RMJ, RMJ

Disadvantages: RMJ, RMJ, RMJ

Well, I doubt anyone else was going to write in here… so I might as well just do one. Write, paste, get a nice set of miles (in sets of 5p), get people’s appreciation, write another one with more confidence and get even more miles (in sets of 5 p). Well this is an opinion on “Plok!”, and that means that I need to write things about Plok!. So here we go:

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One good thing about this getting a high rating is (second from it being good) the fact that it’s from UK. If this game was extremely hyped then Plok (the character) would have probably become a third party mascot for the Super Nintendo. Not only that, the UK gaming industry would have also been given extra credit for such a good game, and this would have probably led to better games. But it wasn’t, so live with it.

Okay, so it’s a SNES game, so you aren’t going to nip out to the local and buy this cartridge, then switch on your Super Nintendo plugged into your 30” TV and play your heart out, thinking it’s money well spent and have a feeling of satisfaction. Instead, you are going to get out the dusty old thing and plug it into the portable TV with the RF lead in the back, and take out the cartridge you already own and take a bit of a trip down memory lane (the one where you played really old games when they were new at the time, not some shoddy drama). That, or you could go and download ZSNES (I highly recommend [http://members.madasafish.com/~kefka for the ROMs, http://zophar.net for the emulator] ^_^)(and DirectX 8) and download some 800kb – 2MB ROM (you better delete it within 24 hours otherwise, when that time is up, I’m going to hunt you down, and kill you.), and
then load up the game and play with some video mode that improves SNES’s graphics by about twice and equip the surround sound and interpolation, etc. This will also cause a memory lane thingy.

Okay, now on with the game as usual…

Plok is a red + yellow bloke with detachable limbs, see. His head and limbs are red, with miscellaneous body parts which are yellow (yellow arms, red hands) etc. It’s got a clever function when playing: you shoot once, he shoots his left arm, then boomerangs back after about half a second. If you press it fast enough before it comes back, his right arm. Then left arm and right arm. At this point Plok is just a body and a head, and you bounce when you move. You can’t do anything except bounce (# pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo down # etc). Then, the limbs will come back. You can move away for them to take longer to come back, but there’s no point. You’d need a snapshot of the game to know what he’s really like.

Well, well, there’s obviously an excuse to be playing this game (well, it is a story/plot, just Mario Party’s story is an excuse with the birthday arguments and whatnot). Plok was at his house one fine morning, on the island of Akrillic. His house seems to be of high quality of other things compared to the other things in the game, but is still bog standard.) He finds that the graceful flag atop his house is gone! THE SHOCK! So, he sets sail to Craggy Island; the mini island with many flags on top. You undergo some training levels, and with each flag post you reach, you find out that it’s not really Plok’s flag. As you go through the levels on this island, you notice the background slowly turning into night (across around 8 levels). As you reach the end, you see the evil brothers (who’s name I can not make the effort to remember/collect). This is a simple enough boss fight, although if it’s your first time then you definitely need a good
few lives, or continues if need be. When on ‘Normal’ mode (Child’s Play mode is not recommended, as Normal would get you better quicker), the enemies are quite fast, and reflexes are tested very well. The Bobbins Brothers (I remember now) jump really, really fast when in comparison, and, well, everything does really. Like I said.

Oh yeah, I’m going on about the plot. So, you gracefully defeat these archenemies (Word picked up arch enemies as a Grammatical error, don’t ask why) and get your graceful flag. After celebrating a bit, you travel back home. So, you get home onto the coast and… EVEN MORE SHOCK! Every single flag in Akrillic as been swapped with flea flags! All 20 or so of them! So what now? All the places with flea flags have a lot of fleas in that need to be eliminated (around 10 - 25 per level) and Plok is the only man/thing who can do it.

Guess what happens next.

All the levels in the game are very nicely detailed (speaking in the language of the SNES’s graphical ability), and for what is on this game, it is extremely varied, with a set of enemies which require a different strategy to defeat, and a load of bosses to relevantly eat a lot of your lives. Don’t forget the levels themselves; the levels in Akrillic all belong to a certain category (first it’s a shore/beach, then you move on to Plok’s House, a certain event happens which I’ll not tell about, then you move onto Plok town, which is full of derelict buildings). Throughout the game, you meet some coves and some caves, some forests and some balloon men which drop stars. The backgrounds are all in very nice detail, and are mostly all unique; if they are the same backgrounds for example, then the colour of the sky will be different. Very nice, you would believe me when you download it and play it.

Well, well… my opinion on a game wouldn’t be the same without a gameplay section, would it?


Well, there are 3 very basic actions that can be executed by Plok:
Jump, Somersault, Punch/Kick/Detach limbs and throw them, then boomeranging them back to you. The somersault, evidently, first looks like a total rip-off of MD’s Sonic (Sorry Murf!), but isn’t at all, as you find out when you really get into the game. You’ll see. All the moves are self-explanatory, really. As for all the other moves, well… you have the hornets, which can be released after pressing X (the SNES pad X) and these fly around in a strange manner and hit the nearest enemy as soon as it gets into the screen. These are quite useful, but when I play the game I really tend to forget them. Damn me. Oh, next move is the angry Plok thing. Press (alternate) L and R repeatedly to throw away Shells (I’ll go into later). This makes Plok get angrier and angrier, and while he is angry, his somersault turns into a razor as opposed to him spinning. This rips through all enemies. It’s very effective, but costly as I’ll explain in a bit.

As for that, there’s not much else. This may not count as a ‘move’, but there is one other thing… there are these targets which can come up sometime in the level. When you shoot/punch/kick them, something in the terrain will change (for the better). Thing is, when you (for example) punch the target, the fist you used will be missing and not come back to you. Instead, look for a hanger with your limb/s on it. It’s a clever idea, and works extremely well in some cases.

And that would more or less sum that part up. Good riddance.

What would come next I say? “Graphics would come next,” I say. Speaking in the graphics of the SNES’s capability (as comparing it with newer consoles is ridiculous) the visuals are really… how would I put it… bah, I’ll think of the word later. The graphics are very good; I wouldn’t be able to say whe
ther it is anywhere near the SNES’s maximum capability. I also noticed another thing that puts this game a bit higher in the ranking corner; I have encountered many times on the game where I am faced with many, many enemies/objects on the screen. And I have suffered no slowdown whatsoever, and believe me: some points of the game are like an obstacle course. In effects, well it’s a bit bog-standard for this game. Nothing would have made you go “Wow! Look at that!” or anything you would do now with ‘Metal Gear Solid 2’. They did put a heavy amount of detail into the textures of this game; all types of enemy are a different colour/texture/size. And you do notice at some points of the game about small things which really add effect. Things like small green things which fly off enemies when hit in a smooth, nicely curved fashion. So, for overall graphics I’d say, as a single word evaluation: Nice.

I think there’s enough detail in there. So, what about the gameplay? Surely I haven’t finished that with just the moves and so on. Plok (The red + yellow guy) has a health bar, this is made up of about 20 small bars, in form of ||||||||||||||||||||. There are several things which have a high power, this being a hit from spikes (most), falling in water and making you WHOOSH out again (middle) and an enemy from the beginning of the game walking in to you (least). The least would take off about 2 or 3 bars, but the most powerful things could take off about 8 bars. Not to fear, however: Scattered around the levels are health blackberry/things. They look like some kind of purple fruit, but I’m not going to do anything, and you’re not going to do anything so SHUT UP! These things are quite visible as they flash, thus getting your attention. They are very small, and running into it would give you about 5 or 6 bars. But something which they didn’t (want to) tell you: If you punch the berry thing, then it g
ets a bit bigger. This will recover about 8 or 9 bars. Then punch (remember, you can kick it too) it again to make it even bigger. This will give you about 14 – 16 health and can not get any bigger. HOWEVER, if this berry is blatantly in a secret place, then you could punch it again for a 3rd time to MAYBE unleash a secret place. Oooh! This can be one of 2 things: A race against time, or a place with loads of shells. The race against time puts you in some sort of vehicle, and you need to get through an obstacle course within a certain time to get a nice level skip to somewhere later in the game. This is good for getting further in the game without throwing away lives, especially if it misses bosses. Also, it can get you past a certain part you usually get stuck on; this would most likely be a boss.

It can be bad, however, for some things. This includes missing part of the ‘story’, making you think “Huh? What am I doing here? What?” As I did when I discovered one rather late in the game. If this is also done, then you could get far in the game, and get to a part which is way beyond your ability. For example, you are intermediate at this game. Then you get this level skip, and it puts you to a really hard part of the game. This isn’t useful at all, what with all them life losses. The last bad thing: I said previously that these said level race things put you in a race against time. These feats are not easy to accomplish; they can take a lot of tries. And if this berry thing is the only opportunity you get, and you lose on the race, then you are put back to where the berry thing was. This is not recommended to anyone who desperately needs health for that part, having hardly any health bars left. Now you have to probably die again to get your health back. But why is this level skip a good thing?

Use your imagination.

Lives are granted to you by the shells scattered across a level, it doesn’t tell you h
ow many you have as a number, but there is a small face of Plok at the top of the screen. This starts off as totally yellow, and as you get all these shells, the face starts becoming purple, ‘flooding’ from the bottom. A life is given to you once it reaches the top. I’m not sure exactly how many, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was 100. Oh, there is one other last thing for me to mention: the Plokontinues (Yes, it is what you are thinking). Once you raise your Plok flag at the end of each level, you get a letter (P L O K is at the top right of the screen). Once you fill up the P L O K then you get a continue ie. complete 4 levels. Sometime in the game you will come across a small red shiny thing. This is also a letter for the Plokontinues. That’s all that needs explaining; really.

Difficulty: Difficult. At first you would probably underestimate it’s real difficulty level, especially if you tried Child’s Play mode first. It starts off not too hard, although I do admit in the first levels I lose a life or two. As the levels go on, the levels get bigger and more complex, with new enemies, faster enemies and much more of them. As you get towards the end of the game it is just inhuman. Like the levels are the Alpha and the Omega. HARD. It took me so, so long to get through this game fully, I nearly (true story) threw my controller right at the screen. I managed to keep my anger in me, so I didn’t in the end. Why? Well, I got all the way to the 2nd last level. And DIED THERE AFTER 3 HOURS OF PLAYING THIS GAME ONCE AGAIN. I never played the cartridge again, instead I recently got it emulated so I could complete it then. So use the state saves ZSNES gives you, because it’s not worth paying £50 or so repairing your monitor. And due to it being something of a 500k file size (Yes I plan to delete it within 24 hours of downloading… then keeping the saves and redownloading it _). So be afraid and do not under
estimate this game.

Okay, I think I’ve done just about enough. Oh:

This game is perfectly suitable for kids, it’s got nothing bad in it at all, except maybe the bad influence of pulling of your limbs to throw them at targets. Shhyeah right. Anyway, this game would have no bad effects and I would say it’s perfectly suitable for all audiences with, as I said, nothing bad at all, if not GOOD things in the game. Just the typical SNES platform. Yup, suitable for anyone, even Conor. ^_^

Right, Plok! Is, in my opinion (of course), ONE of the best, and most classic, platformers I’ve played, and that says a lot for me. I have played a lot. The reason I gave this game 4 stars, though, would be mostly because of the difficulty of the game. But that’s the only drawback, honestly. If you find any more flaws in the game, it will point to its level of difficulty. Honest. It’s a great game with nice variety of levels, and with some really innovative ideas thrown in, too. This is really a game to get (best off emulated) and you know that you have not wasted your time with the game.

Hey, it’s a small download, you know. You could do Nintendo a favour, however, and find somewhere to purchase it. Now go out and get the stinkin’ game, yer cheap bastisch!

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