Gameplay, Story and Value:

For all intents and purposes, Plok is your very average, very generic platformer. Yes it's got charm and some silly humor, but when it comes down to it there's just not a lot to talk about here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Plok likes flags, so much so that he's planted several of them all over the island chain he calls home. One flag in particular, his favorite square flag, has gone missing from his home. Now Plok must embark on a quest to save his flag! Yep... that's pretty much the gist of it. It's really all just a setup to drag you across the islands from level to level, ending in a boss fight every few stages.

Plok controls relatively well with everything responding quickly and handling being tight. You can do a regular jump or a spinning high jump, and pressing Y will cause Plok to throw his limbs a short distance to destroy enemies or activate switches. The whole limb-throwing mechanic is fun and while you'll never have "ammo" issues early on, you will eventually find yourself needing to leave limbs behind in order to solve puzzles. When this is the case you need to be a bit more careful with how freely your launch your attacks, but it never feels like a hindrance.

Level designs are on the generic side, and don't always feel very coherent or intuitive. What is fun are the costumes hidden around some stages, giving Plok new abilities for a set amount of time. For the most part, though, it's just romping through uninspired levels, collecting enough "things" in order to get an extra life, maybe some power-ups...

About those power-ups... There's two that I found during my playthrough. The first is a gem that puts a swirling sparkly thing around you for a few seconds. I couldn't actually figure out what it did. You'd think from looking at it that it would either make you invincible or able to walk through enemies or something, but neither was the case. As far as I could figure out, it did nothing. The second was an item that spun you into a ball, tearing off in the direction you were facing when you picked it up for a few seconds. Cool! Or... not cool. The placement of these items were such that whenever you happened upon one, you were facing right. What that meant was if you were to simply pick up the item you'd immediately spin into a wall, losing the effect instantly. Instead you'd have to carefully jump over the power-up and grab it from the right side in order to get any value out of it.

When you consider the non-descriptive items, shaky level design and often cheap enemy placement, Plok ends up being a very difficult game. Death comes easily and frequently, and the game offers nothing in the form of continues, save games, passwords or pity.

Presentation, Music and Sound:

Colors are bright and sprites are large, but ultimately it all just felt a bit lazy. UI elements are oversized, textures are bland and the whole game feels like it was thrown together in one of those old ClickTeam game maker programs. Nothing looks genuinely bad, but the entire presentation echoes how average the rest of the game is.

Speaking of average, there's the music. I mean, there is music, and it's fine, it's just horribly unremarkable. Sound effects are present and do their job.

Afterthoughts:

Remember going to the video store, not knowing what you were looking for, and ultimately settling on whatever new box caught your eye? I'd usually come home with games like Bubsy, or Cool Spot or Aero the Acrobat, just random bad to average platformers that I'd play for a couple days and never rent again. That's basically how I'd sum up my entire experience with Plok.

Review:

Gameplay: