 SNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN From the makers of games like Equinox, Tinstar, and Ken Griffee Jr. presents Major League Baseball comes a happy bouncy colorful little platformer in PLOK. Many people take one look at this game and immediately ask, what the heck is this PLOK thing supposed to be? Well, according to the manual, he is a... a bundle of pure energy? His hobbies include collecting flags and hating fleas. Okay, sure. One day someone steals PLOK's favorite flag, presumably a flea, I guess, and Plox's gonna go find it. Hey, I've heard of worse stories for video games. Of course, all the usual platformer stuff is here. B jumps, Y is your attack, the A button is a super jump of sorts, and other features unveil themselves as you progress through the game. For instance, the X button activates these helper hornets you collect. You find them in nests here and there, and they just kind of hang out with you until you tell them to go stick some enemies. However, you don't find these until much later on. There's also a feature here the game refers to as the Lost Amulet. You see those shells I'm collecting? Of course, there's the time-honored tradition of collecting a hundred for a free guy. That's a given. But the shells are also used to power Plox's amulet. Just tap the L and R buttons several times, and Plox will go all Tasmanian Devil until the shells run out. But again, that's not until much later on in the game. You get four lives to start with and zero continues, but that's where the letter system comes in. For each level you complete, you earn a letter, as you can see in the upper right there. Railing out Plox completely earns you a continue, so in other words, you get a continue for every four levels you finish. The areas where you earn those continues also act as checkpoints, so if you lose all your lives, you start over from where you last earned a continue. Another interesting feature of Plox is that he uses his limbs to attack. They just fly off of his body, which is a funny visual, especially since he can lose all four limbs at once, which leaves him to just hop around as a torso. There are puzzles you'll come across throughout the game that take advantage of this. For example, there's sections that have these targets here. Hit them with one of your limbs, and it'll change the landscape around you, but the catch is your limb won't come right back to you. It'll be waiting for you on a hanger somewhere. Some targets require only feet, some require all four limbs, so you'll have to hop back on just your torso and retrieve your arms and legs. It's pretty cool. One other thing I should point out is that when you attack, the limbs that connect with an enemy will come back instantly, but if you miss, they kind of float their way back slowly, so you really have to be accurate. Thankfully, most enemies in the early going are hard to miss, but as the game goes on, you really pay for missing enemies. Unfortunately, for all the cool features I mentioned so far, it's hard to get a sense of any of that stuff in the early going. The first handful of levels really aren't going to sell anybody on this game. It's not until much later on that you get a better idea of both of the level design and of what Plox is capable of. That's the game's biggest flaw. I mean, it comes across as just kind of a boring, regular old 16-bit platformer that blends in with the rest of them at first, but as you keep playing, you'll find there's tons of fun stuff here. For instance, there's several different weapons Plox can equip for a brief period. Just look for these present boxes here, and Plox can equip boxing gloves, a flamethrower, a pistol, a spread gun, and a rocket launcher. There's also levels later on in the game that utilize vehicles like a truck, a jetpack, a unicycle that comes with a water cannon, a motorbike that comes with grenades, a helicopter that drops bombs, a UFO, a tank. There's also items that essentially turn you into Sonic for a bit. There's quite a bit here, and it's pretty dang fun. The level design also has some interesting stuff going on. There's the targets I mentioned earlier, but there's also tons of hidden areas that unlock bonus sections where you get to use many of the aforementioned vehicles, so it pays to stop and look around a bit. The settings also get pretty weird as well, like this part here where the game goes into a dream sequence and Plox imagines himself as his grandfather, and the game goes black and white. Seriously, it stays that way for this entire world. That takes some balls to try and do. The presentation is also made out to be like an early 20s silent film. It's the kind of stuff you simply don't see in other games. There's a couple of other flaws I need to mention, however. One being the difficulty. This game is really tough, and in kind of an unfair way at times. Stuff just appears on screen way too quickly, like these falling logs here. You have to be absolutely pinpoint accurate not to take damage. Also, these fleas take about a gazillion hits to kill, which is annoying. And there's these platforms that zip around way too quickly, to the point that you practically have to jump before they even appear on screen to land on them. To Plox credit, the controls here are great, and you're able to adjust your jump in mid-air Mario style. But still, there's a good amount of annoying stuff like that throughout the game. Also, I need to point out that this is a long playthrough, like maybe a couple of hours long, and there's no battery save or passwords here. That's a bummer. Back to the positives, though. I absolutely have to talk about the music composed by Jeff and Tim Fohlen. It's one of the very best soundtracks in the entire Super Nintendo library, containing a wide range of moods and styles. Some tracks sound like they belong in a Turrican game. Some remind me of Yoshi's Island, while other tracks sound like this. It's crazy what they were able to pull off here, and the game sounds awesome from beginning to end. So yeah, Plox is a fun playthrough. I love all the different weapons and abilities. The music is frickin' great. Just don't let yourself be deterred by the slow start. Like I said earlier, the first few levels of this one make this game seem like any other platformer. It's not. The real deal breaker with this one is the difficulty. Plock is frickin' tough, and sometimes blatantly unfair, and that's a bummer. But still, the good outweighs the bad here by a long shot, so I definitely recommend this one. You don't want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.