Another conflicting game for me because the presentation is nice, the sprite work is great, the music is cool, and the character designs are, impressive to say the least. But with all of that said, I just couldn't find anything interesting about the gameplay, at least not anything interesting enough to keep me playing. As someone who's 100%'d The Binding of Isaac and put enough hours into Enter the Gungeon to understand it, this game doesn't have anything that really makes it standout from those for me. The isometric angle and ability to jump on furniture would be an interesting idea if you weren't constantly hit by things that are "inches" below you. So many times where I try to avoid an enemy by jumping over them just to get hit. In fact, most hits felt like you were cheated in some way. Sure the designs of the enemies themselves are nice but so many feel like a giant middle finger to fight - any enemy that sits in the air or off screen waiting to drop on you is a direct message from Satan to remind you he exists. Doesn't help that 90% of them also feel like bullet sponges, and the guns either don't help with that feeling OR are so good you only want to use them on bosses. I could go on about the different kinds of items but in general, you don't get the creative and seemingly infinite item combinations of Isaac, which is fine, but I wouldn't say these items necessarily made the game more fun either. It mostly feels like you're able to stock up a large amount of them very easily, which doesn't even always end up with you feeling stronger. In my 15+ runs I would say I had 2 runs where I was able to quickly kill bosses or instantly clear rooms. While my original plan was to get the true ending on every character, it was on my 6th character that I realized I didn't really care.

Overall, not a bad game by any means but it couldn't keep me entertained longer than 10+ runs and I don't think I'll be playing it again. The bountiful breasts were not enough I guess.

Even though I grew up around a N64 I missed out on this game as a kid and it wasn't until I had a Wii and enough money to buy the game on Virtual Console that I finally got my grimy hands on SM64. I loved this game then, and even went as far as getting all 120 stars. As a kid who assumed he was bad at video games this meant a lot to me. I was also a super Yoshi fan so seeing Yoshi on that roof filled me with so much joy! Even during this replay I had vivid memories of waiting for dinner while playing this game, almost brought a tear to my eye. more than a decade later and I can confidently say this is one of the most stressful games that I've played recently. The janky Clinton administration camera + the demonic level design genuinely had me questioning whether or not I was going to finish this game. I think most of the maps from the latter half of the game are evil as fuck but Tick Tock Clock, Rainbow Ride, and Tiny Huge Island must've single-handedly bent the moral arc of the universe against justice. One minor inconvenience on any of those stages and you'll be greeted by Charles Martinet's best Mario scream to date. My original plan was to get all 120 stars and greet Yoshi on the roof for old time's sake but upon realizing I'd have to get 100 coins on Rainbow Ride I decided I'd rather keep the extra year of life expectancy that would be lost attempting that challenge. 103 stars it is!

Without a doubt, the visuals of Halo game peaked with this one. The beautiful sky boxes of Halo 3 had only gotten better by this one and I have to assume this game took some notes from ODST in the atmosphere of some areas, especially on the darker maps. It really feels like this game hasn't aged visually at all and Infinite looks like a tech demo compared to this. I don't even need to talk about the story that shit is crazy.

The gun selection is also so cool I discarded the lore implications for their existence. DMR instead of BR, I'll take it! Needle Rifle, hell yeah!

I will say though, I played this through the MCC and it's great that it exists (I wish more devs took notes) but the fact that it replaces all the original menus and doesn't even roll credits when you beat the game is an actual hindrance towards the vibes to like ALL of the games in it.