PLOK! - 10 - water damage
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- Опубліковано 8 лют 2025
- fundamentally, what bothers me the most is that I feel like the difficulty is now the only thing we are able to focus on and discuss in this game. Including me! That's like so much of the commentary now D:
/ raocow
talkhaus.raoco... - Ігри
Today's boss: 2006 Diglett meme
I think the discussion of plok's difficulty stems from it being the singular obstacle to this game being actually really good. If a game is just not very good overall or for the most part we don't care nearly as much. But for plok, there's music, visuals, humor, cuteness appeal, story concepts and creative gameplay elements with so much unique merit, all the pieces are there. It should've been a homerun, but then the implementation of challenge being so harsh, punishing and unfun to learn drags all of that art down with it. And then all the different ways we react to the minutia of the effects of the difficulty is approaching a kind of mourning what could've been.
Well said. I had mentioned on an earlier video that the only thing more frustrating than a bad game is a game that is *tantalizingly* close to being good.
Hence why I recommend emulation. Takes a lot of the sting out when you can use savestates and such.
getting angry at this game really makes you sound in-character, like how angry plok was in the first world, finding those fake flags and such. this must have been an intentional part of the design, what a clever game!
I think a giant deadly insanely fast wave of water should be in every game.
The Sisyphean Ordeal of Plok.
Wow, that motorcycle part really highlights how bad the camera placement is. Looks like 70% of the screen is useless, and given how large the sprites are, you'd need to be superhuman to react. Time to learn levels I guess.
Y'know, I'm convinced it's not actually playtime they were concerned with, but when it came to early 90s games, especially mascot platformers, the concern was the Game Rental market, and people clearing a game in 1-3 afternoons, a single rental period. So difficulty spikes, unforgiving checkpoint systems, and nasty knowledge checks were the counters to that. Publishers wanted people to buy the game, and if a new tester could beat the game in a single day's play session, that was no good for sales!
Because of course when you rent a game and it's BS, you go buy it, instead of renting a different one next time.
Wouldn't be surprised, the same thing pretty much ruined Streets of Rage 3.
@@renakunisaki I didn't say it was a sensible strategy, but it's one that was very much present at the time!
@@renakunisaki It's largely only seen as BS nowadays looking back though, that's the thing. Back in the day it was normal, so the "this game sucks ass" deterrent wouldn't have been as strong as it would be if the same thing happened today.
I mean, yes, but that is a playtime concern.
Tags: also, plok hasn't said his catchphrase, in ages
oh, yeah, when he just recites Weezer’s “Undone - The Sweater Song” in its entirety
and you can’t press start to skip or even hold B to speed up the text 😔
You found your first secret bonus level at the start, congrats!
If you go to the left in the very first stage of the game you will also find a secret bonus level.
Death count: 86 (28 today, including 12 from three off-camera Game Overs)
(0:25) Yeah, this game has some neat themes and mechanics. I just wish it wasn't so trolly, and had a properly working save system. Also, checkpoints for the longer levels.
(0:35) Welcome to bonus stage! First time popping a fruit that actually triggers one!
(0:37) "RACE AGAINST TIME"!
(0:43) And, all of a sudden, you're playing Excitebike or Motocross Maniacs. :P
(0:57) Welp, race lost (doesn't count as a death). That was still pretty neat, though.
(1:18) So, that "Rinka shooter" is unaffected by any attacks you have.
(1:32) Oh, sure. Land on a raft, and instantly get splashed by a wave you had no way of seeing coming, and had absolutely no time to react to.
(1:50) First death today.
(3:06) Poke.
(5:16) Seriously, what's the player supposed to do if a flea suddenly jumps at them from off-screen during a jump over a gap like that?
(7:15) Welp, that was a lose-lose situation it seems. And, why isn't there any fruit in this level besides the one at the very start?
(7:43) Dang, I wonder what sapped all of your health during that jump cut?
(8:04) Those rocks are mean, even if you know they're coming.
(10:05) Alright, it's boss time, vs. Rockyfella!
(10:32) That's a mess of attacks! You'd probably have to back off and spin jump over them from the opposite end of the screen.
(11:04) Barf! That ruins your first-try streak that started with the Bobbins Bros trio on Legacy Island.
(11:36) Argh...
(12:18) Alright, I'm adding 12 to the death count then.
(13:27) Nice, didn't even need to spin jump.
(13:42) I'm surprised you didn't get hurt there. So, the large chunks are innocuous?
(14:33) Chipmunk time.
(17:16) Start of the winning boss fight.
(19:45) Victory!
Curiosity... what happens if you win the bike race?
The description is kinda how I feel about a lot of older games tbh. Like, when you listen to people who LOVE that era, difficulty is primarily what they mention. "Games are too easy nowadays! They hold your hand! WE suffered and had to get good!" Like, was difficulty all these games had? Would they be memorable at all otherwise?💀There are some pretty cool games back then that would have been awesome if they had a normal continue system or had difficulty that didn't try to stretch a 2 hour game into a 10 hour one to keep longevity in arcades/prevent game rentals by being extremely punishing or focusing on trial and error. The flea system especially really seems like an afterthought here; most levels aren't even really about finding the fleas, they're about putting them in really obnoxious locations in an otherwise normal level. It sucks that a lot of otherwise neat games ended up fizzling out because the design mindset of the times made them more annoying than fun. Really makes you appreciate games like Mr. Gimmick, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Mario 3, etc. for embracing a more intuitive save/continue system back then!!
Also, this game's boss music has been stuck in my head for the past like three days lmao
you know these flash games that were made by the bucket where its just a character in the same exact controlling vehicle that you have to drive forwards and try to balance your car. so yeah they were really ahead of the time with this one
the music might be like my favorite part of all of this
It's so horrible that the continue-checkpoints, which I thought should just be called checkpoints, DO ACTUALLY get used up like continues. The worst of both worlds! A perfect hybrid!
Hey there random rock in the upper left corner of the boss room how's it goin'
What happened game? The first 2 "worlds" (separated by permacontinues points) were enjoyable and fun, that "world" 3 (akrillic) was painful overall! Now I'm dreading for the 4th one...
(0:35) So that's where the developpers place the opportunity for the player to discover bonus stage; That fruit is completely pointless, so the player might destroy it (if they know how to grow it) just for fun with no (or tiny) drawback unlike the rest of the game up to this point. Too bad it is this far into the game...
I wonder if you could buzzsaw the hands? This game definitely feels like such a bait and switch with the early speedy levels versus the later memorize everything to progress levels.
I wonder if Rockyfella technically counts as a Nintendo Hand Boss
Generally, the hands need to be floating around.
I dunno, raocow. I think this might actually be a bad game.
These power ups are so weird
wondering how much this game would benefit from a zoomed-out camera, or at least camera logic that didn't put you on the edge of the screen so often
I think the actual issue of this game is not the frankly idiotic checkpointing system but the sheer tedium baked into every facet of its level design. Every setup is repeated three times. Every other level has some extremely clever doubling-back feature that does not work in the slightest with restarting from the very start every time. You have to kill a dozen Fleas every time that take three hits each but each hit takes 10+ seconds of waiting for it to come to you + invincibility time + chasing it around the level geometry. Many level design elements force you to wait, wait, wait (the revolving spike doors, the rocket platforms that you have to flip over but only allow that when their spew arc is narrow, all of those unkillable enemies) and you have to - by design! - redo all of that again, and again, and again. Because none of this is actually, you know, fun, most people don't want to play this game legit.
Sonic 1 and 2 don't offer a save feature but nobody really cares because playing through Sonic levels is a blast (processing). Also they have a sane continue feature but that's beside the point. Why do people hate Marble Zone so much? Because it's tedious to play over and over again. Plok is an entire game of Marble Zones. The analogy works even better because Marble Zone's music is amazing too
I never got the hate for Marble Zone... Labyrinth was always worse.
@@EvilMariobot Labyrinth Zone isn't good, but the frequent threat of running out of air means it's at least not BORING. Marble Zone is boring.
@ Guess I just prefer laid-back to nerve-wracking.
@@EvilMariobot I personally like Marble Zone but I never had to play the game without a save system on an actual Genesis. I know that people overwhelmingly hate Marble Zone and I'm pretty sure the forced waiting and block pushing is the reason why. In Labyrinth, you're slowed down at a constant rate by the water, but at least you're DOING something.
@@SimplySimonLP I _have_ played Sonic 1 without save functions, up through Mega Collection on GameCube; so, make of that what you will.
Not being able to see what's coming is a problem that I feel a LOT of mascot platformers from that era had. Notably I remember Bubsy and Jazz Jackrabbit as both being pretty bad in that regard. Just zoom the camera out 90s devs, it's fine!
If Plok were a 90s Japanese game, I'm sure this guy's name in the original would be something like "Onigeolucifo"
So like the game rental stuff really wasnt a thing outside of merricas and devs of this are british, they just kinda made a fucked up game because euro games just kinda were fucked up like that
Apparently they intended this to be an arcade game?
I'm British and there were at least 2 video rental stores near me that also had games back in the 90's so the game rental scene existed over here even if it wasn't as common place as in America.
As a British who was born in the 80s, yeah game rentals were *absolutely* a thing over here and a huge influence on the range of games I played throughout both the 16-bit and 32-bit era. SNES, Megadrive and Playstation rentals defined a lot of my childhood!
@@BobisOnlyBob for whatever reason, and this usually doesn't happen to me, your comment sent me back to the first time I saw a massive row of PlayStation games at the video rental place. I didn't have a console at the time, but I was mesmerised by them instead of actually picking a video!
Honestly it's always so funny to me when someone uses "Euro-" as a shorthand form of saying "European". Cos over here the former only really reads as applying to stuffy business government stuff. Not a game 😅