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XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Halo Novelization A Bestseller 24

Posted by simoniker from the waiting-for-pacman-novel dept.
According to Gamerfeed, the latest novel based on the Halo gameworld, called "Halo:The Flood", is a bestseller, cranking it up close to the Top 10 in the 'mass market paperback' category. Do people think that game novelisations, as discussed in this USA Today report, can be worth reading? Marc Laidlaw's CD-ROM novelization, Gadget: The Third Force, is at least one game-related novel I enjoyed a lot.
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Halo Novelization A Bestseller More

Halo Novelization A Bestseller

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  • The only game-related novel I've read was Myst - The Book of Atrus. I read it a few years ago, but I remember that it was excellent. (Did I get the first post?)

  • Bungie (Score:2, Insightful)

    by krel ( 588588 )
    This is typical Bungie quality plot work. Marathon is still the best plot I've ever seen in a game, and would love to see serious book writen around it.

  • Quality (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KDan ( 90353 ) on Saturday May 03, 2003 @01:46PM (#5869516) Homepage
    So long as the novel is good, I see nothing wrong with that. The problem I've seen was mostly that those novelisation tended to be quite bad. They brought nothing new to the game world, they had no strong and interesting characters, they had no passion put in their writing. When you add onto that that the writing itself was not particularly good, it's not a surprise that they're not very well regarded.

    But should someone with talent decide to write one of those, and was careful to write it so that people with no knowledge of the game can understand and appreciate it, then there's no reason why it should be seen as any different from other novels.

    Daniel
  • Well, there were two game novelizations I liked a LOT. One was based off the Doom series. As far as I know, it was a 4 book saga. The first two covered Doom 1 and 2 (respectively) the other two went on some acid trip of a plot about mormons and aliens called "Freds" so I stick with just the two. The Resident Evil books have shown unwaivering quality in their writing, even the ones where the authors made up their own plot not existing in one of the games. The odd numbered ones tend to be the ones on games an

  • spectre vr (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bskin ( 35954 ) <bentomb@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Saturday May 03, 2003 @01:50PM (#5869539)
    i remember my copy of spectre vr(years ago) came with a copy of snow crash. i actually avoided reading it for years, since i assumed it was a game novelization and it sucked. imagine my surprise when i actually did decide to start reading it one day...

  • Advent (Score:3, Informative)

    by handsomepete ( 561396 ) on Saturday May 03, 2003 @02:23PM (#5869674) Journal
    I was just reading an interview with Orson Scott Card about Advent [slashdot.org]. It sounds like all he's doing for the game is dialogue, but he's apparently doing companion books to be released alongside the games. I might read that, but I don't know that I'd want to read a novel about Halo. Is this book any good?

    And how long is anonymous posting going to be disabled? Make an announcement already!
    • I believe the anonymous posting being disabled is a bug - it only appears on certain stories. We're checking it out.

      Thanks for pointing it out, though. :)
      • Good to know. Thanks for responding, now we can stop bitching about it :). For the record, I'm enjoying the games section. It's a nice diversion from the "all your rights are belong to u.s. gov't and riaa" stories.

  • Max Payne (Score:3, Funny)

    by SirDrinksAlot ( 226001 ) on Saturday May 03, 2003 @02:25PM (#5869679) Journal
    Max Payne has by far the best dialog of any game ever, if anything deserves to be novelized its this.

  • Myst (Score:2, Interesting)

    by krin ( 519611 )
    The only novels based off of games I've ever enjoyed were the Myst novels. I was a pretty big fan of the first game during it's time, and when I stumbled across one of the books I couldn't help but pick it up (The book of Ti'ana). Most other books on games I could never bring myself to do much more then flip through, they just didn't have any depth and felt like the writer put no effort into them at all. The Myst books are fairly decent reads, even if you weren't a Myst fan they are worth picking up at t
    • I would like to underscore that! The Myst novels are truly outstanding a great read. I was really considered they were going to be "fluff" when I started reading the first book. Far from it! Really outstanding novels.

  • My favorite game on Linux has always been Koules [www.ucw.cz].
    I am not sure how a novelization would work though. But Koules is one neat game.
  • How far back to game novelizations go? And I really mean novels based on the games, not just novels that mention board games or something... For sake of argument (and to avoid any Dragonlance mentions), let's limit ourselves to computer games.

    So far I've tracked the Infocom novels [iblist.com] to 1988. Anyone care to go back further?
    • "Shadowkeep", 1984. Truly awful "Wizardry" clone for the Apple ][, with a truly awful novelization by Alan Dean Foster.

      I just did a quick web search and found a page about it here [lysator.liu.se]. The publisher claims that it was the first computer game novelization ever.

  • The authors (Score:3, Funny)

    by Daetrin ( 576516 ) on Saturday May 03, 2003 @08:30PM (#5871556)
    "There is a growing niche of original paperback novels based on games such as Halo and Diablo, written by respected sci-fi writers."

    Well, they were well respected.

  • Great Books (Score:3, Informative)

    by OutRigged ( 573843 ) <rage@o u t r i g g e d . com> on Saturday May 03, 2003 @11:01PM (#5872231) Homepage
    I've read both Halo: The Fall of Reach and it's sequel Halo: The Flood. I've gotta say, both books are great. If you've played Halo, I really suggest reading both of these books, they explain alot of the backstory of Halo, such as how the Spartan's came to be, the discovery of the Covenant, and other cool things you can't find out by simply playin' the game.
  • I think this has been done before. Was it called Ringworld? . Seriously, the plot of Halo wasn't special enough to make me want to read MORE about it. There just aren't any characters that interested me. It's fun for multi-player, but the campiagn is tedious. Not near as cool / involving as system shock or marathon.
    But hey, anything that gets kids to turn off the TV and READ is a GOOD THING (TM), especially if they discover the great Ringworld series
  • Ive read the three books based upon the Descent universe, and yes, they are done well. Although the author stretched a few technical details, like physical size of things, it was a very nice read. (by Peter Telep, who also seems to write books based on other games as well)

    If you see Outpost 2 (Sierra) on the bargain rack, its a good get. The gameplay isnt as fast paced, but it is difficult. And each mission, you get a decent section from the storyline book. Very nice integration. If nothing else, go

  • FoR (Score:2)

    by Have Blue ( 616 )
    The first novel, The Fall of Reach, is WAY better than this one.

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