I'm sure that title grabbed your attention, but I finally got to play the HD version of Sonic Unleashed today, a game I've owned for almost 10 years but never actually played until my uncle bought himself a used xbox 360. I actually remember doing a review of the wii version of the game so long ago, and mentioned how despite having a bad ratio of day to night stages (on wii you only get one daytime stage for every 3 nighttime stages but it's a 50/50 split on the HD version) the wii version was likely the superior of the two, though I could only say that based on second hand sources about the HD version. The biggest issue everyone seemed to have with said HD version was the sun and moon medal barriers, which prevented you from advancing past a certain point until you collected these random things around the stages. Admittedly turning what should be a completionist's achievement into a way to artificially extend play time is pretty scummy, but you know what? I never even got that far! This game is SUCH a goddamn God of War knock-off, and not the breezy simplified version like on Wii, but a full on rip off down to several battle mechanics. The worst part are the QTEs which are supposed to net extra XP and finish off enemies faster, but if you botch them the enemy gets their health back and hurts you. This is bullshit of course because QTEs are tedious crap used by lazy game devs, but since it's on xbox that means the a,b,x,and y buttons are all reversed from how I'm used to, and there is NO beating over 20 years of muscle memory to adjust to that. I kept on dying to the same miniboss on the first stage for over 40 god damn minutes because I couldn't push the button promts for the finishing move. Eventually I just used normal attacks to slowly scratch him to death and finally advance, only to reach that Tornado stage between continents and yeeted the fuck out of the game. I've seen it on youtube, that stage is 10 minutes long and is just an extended QTE, plus I couldn't hit a single god damn enemy because no matter how hard I tried, even keeping the controller in my field of view so I could SEE the buttons I was supposed to press, I just couldn't overcome my muscle memory and kept pushing the top button for X or the right button for A or whatever the fuck they wanted. So yeah, if you've spent your life playing Nintendo games, the xbox version of Sonic Unleashed is literally unplayable, I couldn't even get to the SECOND LEVEL! Oh, and I can't even say "aside from the QTEs it would be okay" because it ISN'T! The controls for the HD version of the game are mushy and slippery. When going through the regular stages I kept feeling like the response time was slow, I'd push a button but he wouldn't do the thing or I'd try to steer left and right and he moves all sluggish, causing me to miss a ton of things and have to backtrack or just fall down a hole or get killed by a minor enemy. The Wii version of the game had MUCH tighter and more responsive controls. This wasn't because of an old controller or something, after quitting I put in my copy of Sonic Generations and it worked WAY better, despite supposedly having the same engine. They must have polished the way it worked between those titles (Sonic Colors was also released between them, giving them another chance to refine it) but it did NOT work very well the first time out.

So now that I have had a chance to play both games, I can finally, definitively say that the Wii version of Sonic Unleashed was indeed a far superior game. People think of the HD version that came out for the 360 and PS3 to be the "definitive" version because of the better graphics, but those better graphics come with looser controls, added tedium to advance the story, and A MASSIVE PILE of QTEs put in for no reason other than God of War did it and they were trying to imitate its success. Remember kids, better graphics DO NOT make for a better game.