Plok (SNES)

When I think back on my time playing Plok, the word that somehow seems to best describe it is “cheeky”. Its strange little cartoon hero is described as “irresistible, irrepressible, unstoppable, [and] highly improbable” by the manual, the conflict arises from the fact Plok believes he’s entitled to rule an island because he planted flags all over it, and the game isn’t afraid to have fun with weird ideas like having him dress up like a boxer as a parody of the Rocky theme plays. Some of this cheekiness can manifest as things like little ambushes or strange level concepts, but it all comes together into a side-scrolling platformer with a powerful and unusual personality that can draw you in despite its more difficult moments.

The star of Plok is a quirky character, his head seemingly a hood his facial features appear over and his body comprised of detachable limbs he can launch out as an attack. Believing himself king of his island thanks to the earlier mentioned flags, he doesn’t really seem to do much ruling, but when someone pilfers his favorite flag from right off of his roof, he takes off to find the culprit only for his entire island to be conquered in his absence. While Plok can seem a little full of himself he doesn’t seem like a bad guy, more a fellow who has a simple view of the world. Some unusual language choices makes the moments he speaks up a little bit more interesting, but his quest to reclaim his island is at least somewhat justified since the Fleas who took it over seem to be covering it with an unusual substance that can’t be good for nature.

The adventure Plok goes on is a surprisingly imaginative little journey, but even in the early stages it’s a bit clear there’s more going on than running and jumping to a level’s end. Plok’s limb firing power extends to both his arms and legs, meaning he can launch all four and find himself hopping around as a head on a torso for a bit if you get overzealous. The game makes sure you are aware of this limitation before it starts to innovate on the idea a little bit more, stages starting to feature objects and scenarios that will rob Plok of pieces and it can become a bit of an action puzzle to figure out how to carry your limbs forward while also doing necessary interactions. Entire levels can be themed around how this feature is explored such as one where you the first half has you hopping about with no legs.

While limb firing is your most common way to deal with dangers in your path, Plok has a few other skills and a surprisingly lengthy list of alternate forms. Plok packs two jump types, a normal one that still lets him launch his limbs when performed while the spinning somersault takes away the offensive options but can get you higher in the air. A bit stranger is Plok’s ability to get some help from Buddy Hornets, these little bugs picked up around the level and circle Plok’s head until you release them after which they’ll try to home in on nearby foes. There are many times where you might be in dangerous tight space or just can’t line up your limb launches to hit a foe safely, but the hornets are an effective back-up that, while not present in every stage, do give you a treasured edge and expand how you can engage with the creatures you encounter. In some stages you might find a gift that lets Plok briefly play dress up with a costume that changes his abilities, and while some like the cowboy feel more like a joke, another that lets you run around with a killer flamethrower is certainly an enjoyable burst of power and a dose of unique play. In fact, the game’s final world is almost entirely comprised of unique gameplay situations, each level featuring a new vehicle type like a tank or helicopter that gets put through its paces before you move along to the next one, and this final world isn’t at all small either.

Plok’s gameplay isn’t just trying to hold your interest by whipping out some shiny new thing all the time though as it has a good amount of standard stages that instead explore the way normal platforming can be tested. There are two main level formats, the game beginning with stages devoted mostly to reaching the end before the Flea menace becomes a clear threat and levels start to shift more towards exploring larger areas to wipe out every flea that infests it. While the verticality of the flea-clearing stages can sometimes be a drawback as falling can lead to a good deal of ground you’ll have to retread, they also have interesting approaches to how you explore them like tipping structures in a village to reach new places or making a gradual climb by blowing up obstructions. The normal stages are often much shorter but still try to pursue a singular idea for a while, but by being somewhat experimental so often, Plok does hit on a few ideas that aren’t as clean and lead to some of the game’s uneven difficulty.

Plok inhabits a colorful world with often fairly catchy background music, but there are moments where you’re going to be made to jump into a situation you don’t have as much visual information as you’d like. For example some rolling log hazards might appear with almost no time to react to them, but in the short levels this can end up being the main trial to overcome so you figure out how to navigate this danger. Plok has a health bar so he can take a few hits as you’re learning what’s going on in a level and there are plenty of floating shells that can be collected to earn extra lives, but there are certainly more trying stages that will be able to wear you down quickly. Others might have weak ideas like spinning spiked doors you have to wait on to walk through safely or cradles that serve as moving platforms that sometimes zip around so quickly you can be hurled into danger before you can react, but there is also the Plokontinue system where certain moments provide a free continue point if you lose all your lives or you can set some yourself gradually by collecting letters to spell Plok’s name. The game isn’t too generous so it doesn’t diminish the difficulty, but there are some accommodating design ideas like fleas you kill in the larger levels staying dead.

Plok is certainly tough, but beyond the moments where that arises from dangers appearing too suddenly, it is an interesting kind of challenge to overcome. Bosses can fall into this camp since almost each one is fought differently but involves a short learning process that could go awry if you don’t play carefully. A cautious advance is almost always key to survival but you’re still able to engage with a level’s new core idea without having to tiptoe just to survive, progress kept exciting even if during battles against bosses like the inflatable Pekinos you’ll need to do some pinpoint dodging near the end of the fight. Then again, an idea in a normal level like a shield-bearing baddie that needs to be hit from behind twice in short succession but turns after the first hit doesn’t feel very reliable, so Plok again stumbles a bit as it tries to pursue a lot of ideas in quick succession. A few whiffs can’t kill the overall enjoyment of seeing where a new level or battle may head though, but it would be nice if some stages were a bit cleaner in how they approached their specific trick or trial.

THE VERDICT: Plok’s colorful platforming adventure tries to bring creativity to everything it attempts, be it a short quick side-scrolling stage or a more intricate level with power-ups, vehicles, or losing your limbs, and with some excellent music backing it, it’s easy to get sucked in and forgive some of its stumbles. It gets a little too happy with having enemies and hazards appear on screen suddenly and that harms an otherwise satisfyingly strong degree of challenge, but these little rough patches are forgivable enough thanks to the imaginative company they keep. This cheeky SNES game heads into unexpected directions and mostly sticks the landings despite how diverse the concepts are, Plok spicing up the journey by experimenting in a wide range of ways both with stage design and your hero’s available abilities.

And so, I give Plok for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System…

A GOOD rating. Plok is an appealing little fellow with a fun attitude, a strange world, and an interesting array of potential uses for his powers, but the game itself has some moments that certainly hold it back. Popping into a tank for a stage is a fun twist but then there’s a section about slowly blasting open barriers, introducing new dangers is nice but some appear on screen too quickly to react to, and some things like the amulet that gives you a powerful jump attack are a bit too strange to easily integrate. Plok is constantly searching for new ways to iterate on its platforming action without completely straying into new genres, and some of those ideas are certainly excellent like the larger levels where the focus is on flea extermination. Sometimes the proper safety nets aren’t there though leading to disheartening moments like dropping down in a tall vertical level or needing to replay one of the game’s much longer stages from the start after a death due to the lack of checkpoints, but Plok’s continued procession of unique level ideas, superb music like the Beach theme and Creepy Crag’s music, and general success rate with gimmicks like the costumes keep it entertaining to go back from more even if you’ll sometimes have to push against something fairly difficult to get to the next level. The abundant chances for extra lives or Plokontinues certainly smooth some things out and Plok being able to take a few hits and find fruit to recover also can make the ambushes that do slip through easier to tolerate, but a proper save system would make this game more accessible considering it has some fairly long levels and nearly forty stages in total. Tidy up how things like the rolling logs appear and the moments that feel a little cheap can be sanded away as well, there being plenty of moments where you can find a good range of simple but entertaining platforming trials without needing to slip in such ambush attacks as well.

Plok heads in many directions and yet even with its many strange creatures and scenarios it doesn’t feel like it’s unfocused. Plok spends time testing its normal platforming abilities and the limb-launching mechanic, and even when you pop into a helicopter or put on a boxer costume, you’re still facing off with fleas or trying to make sure you can balance careful advancing with reactive attacks. The cheeky hero and the quirky world he inhabits have a lot to offer and it makes the more difficult moments worth overcoming so you can explore the next interesting approach to stage design or ability use. Perhaps trying to refine the experience too much would start to strip away some of its intriguing peculiarities, so it’s perhaps best to enjoy the Plok we got since its personality and willingness to experiment is what makes it so appealing.