What a great overview and review of Video Game books and adaptations! I've read the original Starcraft books Liberty's Crusade, about a freelance reporter that gets involved with the events of the Terran campaign in Starcraft 1 and its characters and shadow of the Xel'naga, which I cannot quite remember the plot. I've read Halo: Reach which was a pretty interesting backstory in the Spartan Program and other Spartans along 117.
I too also read the Metal Gear Solid and Assassins Creed 2 adaptations aswell as the Warhammer 40k Blood Ravens, a Dawn of War adaptation, and felt them lacking in comparison to the events in the game.
I think I lost a taste for books based on/around popular video games when I realized that most events in the book often went unrecognized in the game and its developers hardly mentioned it at all which created a disconnect between the story I read and the continuation in the game.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this concept! It's funny how much a story from a video game can sprawl off into different genres of books and sometimes surprise the reader with a surprisingly great read from a game series they know.
The funny thing about Halo: The Fall of Reach is that the book came years before the game, so Halo: Reach is technically a game based on a book, a whole other can of worms I will probably have to deal with at some point, between this book you mentioned, The Witcher and Metro, probably among many others.
I do have to admit that not acknowledging cross-media stuff is also a pet-peeve of mine. To my knowledge, Halo and Assassin's Creed are mostly up to par with keeping the continuity relatively clean (the games themselves sometimes breaking lore and failed live action projects notwithstanding).
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