In many ways this is an impressive remake and I wouldn't be totally baffled to hear someone who considers it better than the original. The graphics are incredibly ahead of their time. The graphical jump from N64 to the OG xbox in just 4 years time is actually amazing. The visuals would have held up well even being a late Xbox360 game let alone during the ps2/gamecube era. That said the visuals do have some drawbacks. The more realistic look somewhat undermines the fact that the game's meant to be a parody of stuff like Banjo Kazooie. And the animation work especially in the cutscenes, is much stiffer. Characters are much less expressive. Dialogue is also excessively censored for some reason. Wild it's Microsoft that got cold feet over this game and not Nintendo. I'm someone who often finds the bleeps funnier than the actual swear would have been, the OG game got this perfectly. But they went way overboard on this one.

Another thing that's a positive but a double edged sword anyway...A lot of quality of life improvements were made. You can now strafe while holding your melee weapons, so you'll have no trouble smacking keys or cheese or whatever else you need to grab by knocking it out first. All projectiles now have a reticle and a more modern control scheme to boot. But personally I find there's legitimate value to "dated" game design concepts. For example the aiming reticle. Before when you're throwing toilet paper, you have to get a feel for it and hitting your shots feels like you're genuinely aiming in a relatively realistic way, and it's satisfying to do well. Same goes for the slingshot and knife throwing. But now that there's a reticle I really feel like all gameplay is gone, it's merely moving the reticle over your target and nothing more. The N64 wasn't incapable of having reticles, they literally use them for guns and such in the later half. I can't say I ever thought toilet paper throwing should have one. And on a similar note, now that you can strafe, 100% of the gameplay revolved around hitting anything before it runs away is entirely undermined, making it no longer satisfying in the slightest. Makes me think of this joke LIST by user chandler. The joke being how not uncommon it is for people to disregard the essence of what makes a game good just because it doesn't follow modern conventional standards. Following this design philosophy of updating "outdated" mechanics may technically make a game "better" to play, but it removes wrinkles in the gameplay, flattens it out into a more predictable experience.

And while they were at it they added this new enemy type. It's not something you really notice but the original didn't really have enemies roaming around that weren't relevant to the current mission. But I guess they figured it would be worth adding since they went through the effort of ruining fixing your melee attack. And idk they're just weird additions that don't add much. Sections that were perfectly fine without them now want you to stop and fight the same enemy for the 6th time.

But yeah glad it exists, I'll always take multiple versions of the same game, that's just something I'm always interested in. But besides the novelty of just how well the graphics hold up, I'd rather play the original.