I've Been Diddled Again! Let's Play Plok!

More games should reference old timey movies.

Dammit, Demo! You said that Plok only had two great expressions! I say FIE on your claims!

Mustache is not an expression!

Why isn't Plok more famous.

I deny this claim as well!

Well, it turns out that trying to hide out in the studio over the past few nights was a completely terrible idea! There aren't any beds and I suspect the auto-vacs have begun to develop a taste for blood.

Anyway, YES! It's your weaselly host back to bring you a special dose of cartoonage to brighten up your dreary lives, only this time it's not Saturday Morning Sundae, it's Monday Night... Toonsday? Yes... yes! Let's go with that.

When we last left good ol' Grandpappy, he was halfway through the untamed wilderness of Legacy Island. Who knows what sort of exciting prizes await him this time?



Welcome to Swifty Peaks, where there are no peaks and if there were they certainly wouldn't be moving! Once again, Grandpappy is greeted by an unfriendly Lily Mace. If you viewers at home think these are causing problems for Grandpappy, wait 'til you see the sort of madness they put his grandson through!



This level takes that whole “no two buzzsaws last the same amount of time” concept and turns it into a pseudo-puzzle thing. There are several spots in the level where Grandpappy comes across groups of three buzzsaw powerups; only one of these three powerups lasts long enough to launch Grandpappy over a fairly large gap nearby. The other two buzzsaws exist to fool Grandpappy, as they move him only a few feet forward before running out of juice. I've yet to discover if being all buzzsaw'd up allows Grandpappy to kill the Lily Maces, but I seriously doubt it.



Shift Peaks is also where Grandpappy faces Lily Maces in groups of two. I honestly have no idea how to get him past the second one without taking a hit! If he punches the first one to get a clear shot at the second, by the time his punch connects, the first Lily Mace is already back down to its original position. Might as well just sacrifice a bit of your moxie in return for an easy way out, Grandpaps.



Zounds! There's nothing sweeter than a BONUS PLOK, is there Pappogrand? Now you have the strength of EIGHT Ploks! Two more, and you'll equal the strength of a newborn puppy*. You may be strong enough to uproot sad banana peel trees with your bare hands, but are you strong enough to melt the hearts of our viewers?



*PLOKONTINUE guarantees reincarnation as said puppy should PLOKDEATH ever occur.

LOGS ARGH



Paps isn't lookin' too swell at the moment. Those surprise logs did some serious damage to his headcase, and as if it were mocking him, the level decides to throw several groups of three Lily Maces for him to deal with. Grando has been alive for too long, and these Maces just won't take it anymore! Regardless of their persistence, Grandpappy has the cabinets to take the Maces on no prob-



O...Oh, uhh...



Oops.



He may not have gained puppystrength, but Grandpappy still gets another shot at making it through the Land of the Logs. As you can see, even when he does make it, he is on the verge of keeling over. At least a nice tree nearby decided to bear fruit! Without it, Grandpappy would surely fall to the suddenly-overwhelming log menace.



The last thing standing between Grandpappy and sweet, sweet Victory is our old friend Rockyfella! Show him how much his friendship means to us by punching him right in his stupid, rock-spewing mouth, Pops!



Someone's got quite the mouth on him.

You've buried more junk than you can ever imagine, Grandplok. Now, to atone for your burying sins, you must crouch like you've never crouched before, sliding down a sloping hill while avoiding bastardly Budd Lites! It's just too bad that, unlike a certain other mustachioed platform hero, Grandpaps doesn't damage anything he slides into.



Yes, friends, it's another level full of sawblade action. At least it prevents Grandpappy from being injured, right?



Oho! It appears that the powerup has placed Pappy near a pair of precariously-positioned prickly poles! This little platforming gauntlet makes Crouch Hill my favorite level in Legacy Island. There aren't any Lily Maces to deal with; only careful jumping times and avoiding the occasional Budd Lite. Also, fruit-eat.



You may not be able to tell, but that Gershwin was moving incredibly fast, ramming its bad pineapple self right into Grandpappy's grill. We have to give the old man some credit, though; he's finally quick enough to avoid another batch of SURPRISE LOGS up on dirt hill.



It is! That is him!



The next world's boss will be four Bobbins Bros at once, only this time the floor will be made out of Lily Maces, and Plok won't have any limbs.

The best strategy to follow in this fight is simple: try your damnedest to keep Grandpappy from getting hit. These Bobbins have the same toothy attacks and erratic jump patterns their grandchildren... will have? Had? Grandchildren?



Another effective strategy written in the Plok Family Guide to Combating Combatants is to run the hell away when the teeth and jumping get too overwhelming. Now Grandpappy has the upper hand! As soon as those Bobbins show their faces, POW! Down goes one. BIFF! There goes another.



BAM! The third Bobbin has been obliterated. Now all that's left to do is dig up whatever junk you have hidden in the dirt pile, Grandpappy. Hurry and dig faster! Who knows what sort of connections these guys had?



Hot diggity! It's the amulet! It looks like your hard work has finally paid off, Grampo; where are you gonna put that amulet for safekeeping?



That's... not a safe place. Like, at all.

MEANWHILST

Oh, so he did hide it somewhere safe. That Grandpappy, always the kidder! This must raise a question in the mindbrains of all you viewers out there: what exactly does this special amulet do?

“Tell us, Mr. Weasel!” cried the nosy audience from their comfortable chairs at home. “Without knowledge... our brains will die!”

Don't you worry, I'll tell you exactly what the amulet does... next week! Until then, keep your brains hydrated with sweet knowjuice by learning yourselves some books or solving complicated Calculus problems!

See ya in 7!

Man, if anything ever solidified that Plok is a hard game, this is it.

Grandpappy hid his amulet in the future?

I think the level is called Swifty Peaks...but that makes even less sense than Shifty Peaks. Plus I don't think it's even a word.

My eyes are terrible liars.

Oh god, why did I start an LP so close to the semester?

Because you love us that much

Because you have determination!

He must, considering the game he picked! Press on!

Because you're determined to love us that much.

HEY THERE! Thought you'd gotten rid of me for good, didn't ya? Well, you were oh so wrong.

Turns out the fatcats up on the top floor didn't think so highly of my decision to live in the A/V studio for a few days and gave me a suspension! Without pay!

It's not all bad though; I'm back for this week's super-late Saturday Morning Sundae, and thanks to some careful planning, the suits upstairs won't ever find out who slashed their tires!

Now, uh, if I remember correctly, we'd just witnessed the olde-tyme exploits of one Grandpappy Plok and returned to the mysterious land of the present. What sort of secret power does Grandpappy's Amulet hold? Does it even matter? We'll find out soon enough!



I'm not entirely certain what Plok Power is, but if it's powered by shells, it must be good! Anyway, it looks like we're back to the good ol' flea hunting gameplay we saw back in Garlen Beach and Sleepy Dale. It's a little disconcerting that a place called Plok Town is so... empty. Who exactly does Plok govern over? Himself? Maybe he rules over these seemingly hapless Shprouts with an iron fist. Shprouts come in a variety of forms and colors, but I'm not so certain about different flavors. Anyway, punching a Shprout will cause it to leap into the air, like so:



As the Shprout recoils from the first hit, our hero needs to deliver another punch to put it down for good. There are plenty of Shprouts in Plok Town, so viciously murdering them quickly becomes second nature.



Oh, right! There are fleas here. These are still killed the normal way (i.e. punchies). The boarded up buildings in Plok Town give us a little bit of insight as to what may have happened here: Plok, drunk on power and hard liquor, went on a wild rampage through the town, punching every townie he came across right square in the face. The townies, having already suffered from a lack of food and severely limited freedoms, saw this act as the straw that broke the camel's back. Thus, they decided to stage a full-scale revolt against their mockery of a ruler. This plan didn't play out too well, though; the townies didn't expect Plok to use the forbidden art of kicking in combination with his fearsome punches. Having suffered severe casualties, the townies had no choice but to flee their beloved homeland of Poly-esta, leaving the land under the ongoing rule of an intoxicated fool.



You may have noticed that Plok Town has a lower level where most of the fleas are hiding. Going along the lower level means having to deal with spikes, oddly-shaped logs, and logs that seriously come out from nowhere and move with such incredible speed that our hero barely has any time to react to them. He does get some more of those cool bees, though.



Normally, Plok would just hop onto that conspicuous yellow platform and be well on his way to Plok Town's upper levels, but I suspect that he's caught a glimpse of a well-deserved treat out of the corner of his eye. The special treat just so happens to be one of those super-cool Letter Tokens that we saw a while back. Ain't ever gonna see me complainin' about free letters! With treat in tow, our hero ascends to a higher level.



What's- huh? I-In all my years of watching these cartoons, I've never seen this happen before! Plok must have wandered into a SECRET ROOM when I wasn't looking! Look at all these shells! What a wonderful boun- wait, that is an unusually large Budd Lite! It m-must be... a Budd! Unlike Budd Lites, Budds can be killed with nine punches to the face. The tradeoff with this is that, instead of shooting normal projectiles, Budds shoot Budd Lites at you. This may sound absurdly unfair, but these Budd Lites are special; after they shoot two or three projectiles, they disappear, never to bother Plok again.

Despite what my colorblind eyes initially led me to believe, these are not silver shells; they are Pink Shells! They're pretty different from the typical yellow shells in that they refill some of our hero's health while having the value of approximately ten shells. This isn't even really an estimate with a solid foundation; it would be so much easier to gauge if only the HUD weren't so stingy with numbers! SUDDENLY, a present drops from one of the friendly pipes and lands directly on Plok's head. What sort of sweet-ass costume will this particular box hold?



It's Rocket Plok! With this particular getup, our hero can shoot in four different directions at the same time! It is incredibly useful against fleas, but there aren't ever any fleas in the bonus rooms.



Surprisingly, there is another one of those Letter Tokens in here! That's two in one level; a world record! Nabbing it completes the hero's name once more, granting him another illustrious PLOKONTINUE. Rocket Ploket has pretty much done all there is to do in this particular room of secret boni, so he decides to loaf about shooting rockets to nowhere before being booted out of the cool kid's club.



You can just barely see him hiding behind the score counter, but that there is a Parashprout. They float down from the air lobbing boomerangs at Plok before hitting the ground and resuming their lives as plain ol' Shprouts. Because of Plok Town's generously wide-open spaces (well, not counting the lower level), fleas are super-easy to exterminate. Try and jump on him now, two-legs! With one flea to go, our hero has arrived at the home stretch. That platform may seem solid, but...



Before long, they turn to a sickly barfy color before shrinking down to reveal a small tower of spikes. There's plenty of time to gauge when it's best to jump, though, so aside from the small width of the platforms themselves, this bit of platforming is refreshingly easy. By continuing along the path, our hero encounters and exterminates the last flea, freeing yet another of his precious flags from their clutches.



Yeah, you won't be saying that for long.

Well, uh, this is unexpected! Didn't we just fight a boss naught but two levels ago? Ahh, it's no big deal; these Penkinos are the easiest bosses in the game, if only because they actually follow a set pattern that makes it easy to ice them with a bit of patience and some well-placed punches. There are four-different colored Penkinos to fight, and they all have the same attack: pooping stars. As they float about through the air, they'll drop slow-moving stars that can do a fair amount of damage.



You viewers at home may have noticed the strange pillars strewn about the battlefield and are probably wondering what they're doing there. That is an easy question that I can provide a competent answer to! Punching those targets on them causes a surge of spikes to erupt from those menacing-looking voids. If a Penkino flies by and you hit the target at the right time, you'll knock it out of the air and bring it down to punching level.



Every time Plok hits a Penkino with a mighty punch, it begins to move through the air more quickly while increasing the number and falling speed of its stardrops. The Penkinos can actually be pretty hard if our hero rushes in to it and punches each Penkino enough to the point where the long, gapless trails of falling stars they leave behind will lead to his inevitable doom. The smart way to do it is to just take on one Penkino at a time and ignore the others. If Plok knocks a Penkino out of the sky that isn't his current target, he'd be better off not punching it.



Following this strategy makes the whole fight a breeze, don't it? The Penkinos are the only bosses in the game where standing around and carefully timing punches is a good thing!



With the Penkinos dropping like flies, our hero must have gotten a little too overconfident to be on the lookout for falling stars. He was so close to finishing off these floating windbags without taking a hit, too!



And thus, the last Penkino is dead. No longer will their wretched family line disturb the peace on Poly-esta! Future generations will be free from the influence of their dazzling looks and astounding magic tricks; instead, they will lead proper, boring lives in King Plok's acid min- wait, what? Plok is a king?! I thought I was joking! I must consult the viewer's guide for the truth.


Well I'll be damned.

On that note, I'd better am-scray before studio security throws me out at closing time again! They can throw me pretty far, too, so it's not something that I want.

Anyway, 'til next week, friendos!

Well, if you have to have anyone as king, it might as well be a flea-hating man made of velcro.

It's hard for me to figure out what exactly I love about this screenshot, but I really do adore it. Also, Plok governing himself in an empty town is one of the saddest things.

Presumably, Plok governs the Shprouts. But the hateful Fleas have filled their heads with lies about what a flea-run government would be like.

And when the people are disenfranchised they turn on the their leaders.

Expect another update soon, friendos! I've just been really busy with animationings and whatnot.

Between this and Zombies Ate My Neighbors its like you're directly tapping in to the part of my brain that stores the memories from ages 8-12 that aren't turn based RPGs. This is an awesome thing, by the way. What's your next LP going to be, Soul Blazer or one of the Final Fights?

To save yourself from experiencing massive disappointment, never expect me to LP an RPG!

...well that doesn't sound good.

What happened?