Sonic Unleashed Gets A Fan-Made Native PC Port And It Is Compatible With The Steam Deck

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Recently, we have seen the incredible community find ways to create native PC ports of older, classic games, and today is no different. As I was browsing around, I came across an announcement that Sonic Unleashed had gotten a fan-made native PC port from the Xbox 360 version of the game, so I had to brush off my Xbox 360 and try this out for myself. And yes, it is fully Steam Deck compatible.

I also want to mention that SteamDeckHQ does not condone piracy in any form. If you are going to try this native PC port out, we recommend dumping a legitimate purchased copy from the Xbox 360.

Like other recompilations, this one adds in a bunch of new modern features to make the game seem like it was made recently with newer visuals. In this case, we have a new options menu, high framerate and ultrawide support, more controller features, achievements, high resolution enhancements like MSAA, better Depth of Field, better Texture Filtering, and a more precise implementation of the reverse Z technique to fix jittery motion blur. There's also a brand new renderer written from scratch to optimize the performance, making it even better than it could be if you emulated the game. There is also mod support if you use Hedge Mod Manager.

The setup process of UnleashedRecomp from hedge-dev is relatively easy. There is a flatpak option for those on Linux/Steam Deck, and once downloaded, you just have to start the installer, choose a language, find your dumped game files, and let it finish installing. Then, it's as easy as adding a non-Steam game to your library and looking for "UnleashedRecomp" in the menu.

In-game, it is running relatively well. I was getting an average of 13W - 14W battery drain at a solid 60 FPS, with some areas going down to 10W. For a native port of an Xbox 360 game with tons of advancements, I would say this is pretty fantastic. It's a great way to experience one of the best modern Sonic games, and definitely worth investing your time to play if you already have the game on Xbox.

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