Animated feature or cheap marketing ploy? Mix the fantastic CGI in this trailer and the solid track record of Sonic animation (my 3 year old turned me onto Sonic X — it rocks) with the need for Sega win back the hearts and minds of gamers, and I’m going to say it falls somewhere in between. Either way, this looks awesome.

Night of the Werehog is a short animated film set to debut sometime this month at nightofthewerehog.com, probably around the November 18th release date for Sonic Unleashed. No word on the specific details yet — will it serve as a precursor the game? Is made up of cut scenes? Does it smell like fresh baked cookies?

After going hands on with Sonic Unleashed at X08 earlier this year, I’m pretty psyched to get my hands on anything related to the came. Here’s to hoping Night of the Werehog debuts soon!

It’s a strange (and arguably sexist) comparison, but bear with me. Let’s say there’s a woman out there that’s an absolute 10 — the kind you give your left nut to be with. Amazingly enough there appears to be some potential that you can get with her. So you get uber-exicted, all worked up about how amazing this is going to be — and when it finally happens? Turns out she shags like a stroke victim.

Tell me that doesn’t describe every Sonic game to come out in the last 5 years — Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog — every time they were announced we thought these were going to be the titles to save the franchise and every time they did nothing but stink up the joint. In it’s defense I’ll say that Secret Rings was at least playable, but let’s face facts, for the most part Sonic & Co. have been those babbling stroke victims in the sack that we had been convinced would do the bump’n'grind like a real pro.

New video of Sonic Unleashed to get too excited about above.