CarrionCrow: I started playing it a while back, but got so frustrated that I gave up.
A few months passed, and I found that I really wanted to get that into the beaten games pile, so I went back to it.
I can certainly see why you'd stop playing.
The bottom line is, Meat Boy really isn't a great platforming character, and the collectibles aspect isn't that good, either.
When you've got items that are so small you can barely see them, combined with warps that fade out and glitch levels that appear on random runs, it all feels like the designers want you to keep running the same rounds again, and again, and again, and again.
The two mindsets of "hell yeah, I just managed to beat this by the skin of my teeth with half a second remaining" and "let's linger and pixel hunt through death trap after death trap" don't go together well at all.
And when it comes to actually controlling the main character, it's like trying to control an epileptic in a warehouse full of strobe lights. Doable, but it's going to get very ugly in the meantime.
You end up having to fight with everything. To get A+'s, you can't ever stop running. But running will get you killed 100 times more.
Wall slides, wall jumps, frigging jumps in general, for every good thing you can do, it's still guaranteed that those exact things will get you killed literally thousands of times.
Also, yes, I do have a place to sleep that isn't my desk. I just stay up until I have no energy left at all, so I end up using my keyboard as a pillow.
I couldn't have described it better. I thrill just in remembering it... >__<
I'm also used to go to bed when I have no more energy at all... I understand... !!