Books based on popular video game franchises are commonplace these days, but are they worth spending your hard-earned money and precious time on?
We've rounded up five of the best-selling novels on the market and reviewed them for your reading pleasure:
DEAD SPACE: MARTYR
Publisher: Titan Books
Writer: B.K. Evenson
Michael Altman is Jesus. Sort of. He's regarded as a Messianic figure in the Dead Space fiction; the titular martyr whose death galvanised a religion that would come to be known as Unitology, the freaky-deaky cult you've been murdering brutally in both games. In fact, Altman's a name you'll recognise if you collected all those data logs. Unitologists never shut up about him.
An insatiable drive to 'just sort of wanting to know what's going on' sees Altman uncover a sprawling conspiracy, place himself in near constant peril and eventually blow up the bad guy's base. His girlfriend's an anthropologist, handily enough, which warrants a side plot involving a tribal village discovering a Necromorph flapping about on the beach.
There's a lovely paragraph about inflating grey skin sacs, before they all chuck sticks at it. This leads, in turn to an incredibly trite 'honey I'm home' chapter, in which Altman and his anthropologist girlfriend realise that their two seemingly unrelated experiences might be somehow be, in fact, very closely related after all.
Martyr adds a great deal to the Dead Space canon, which makes it of some worth to anybody looking for something more from the games beyond stomping aliens until their limbs explode.
There's a nice bit with some inflating grey sacs, but includes a sickening instance of the word 'holoscreen' - 3/5
ASSASSIN'S CREED RENAISSANCE
Publisher: Penguin
Writer: Oliver Bowden
Just how much do you love tutorial missions? What about watching someone else play tutorial missions? What
about reading about watching someone else play tutorial missions? Renaissance delivers just that: a step-by-step narration of the events of Assassin's Creed II as though culled from a walkthrough, tutorial missions and all.
It's not quite complete - the game wraps its 15th century swashbuckling inside a near-future science fiction yarn. There, a hapless mope called Desmond uses a machine called the Animus to relive the lives of his Assassin ancestors - thus uncovering the resting place of mysterious artifacts which will be the key to victory over the nefarious world-dominating Templars.
Characterisation goes no deeper than the print on the page and conversations largely serve to bridge the gap from one stabbing to another, as Ezio knifes his way through the Templar cabal. The structure adheres so closely to that of the game that even the set-piece killings become a chore.
Comments
20 comments so far...
altitude2k on 2 May '11 said:
"The 5 best video game books"
3/5
2/5
2/5
2/5
3/5
Yeah, some real stonkers right there...
PseudoDuck on 2 May '11 said:
Wait...what?
"5 best video game books" - none get more than 3/5.
Ok.
The Halo novels, or any of the Gears of Wars books are better than these. In fact, since this is a PSM3 article, I bet there are a boatload of non-exclusive video game books that are superior to the seemingly wastes of paper listed here.
liquidsoap89 on 2 May '11 said:
Wow... Thanks for this CVG. I totally didn't come here to read about the 5 best video game books or anything. Why would I, that would have been insane...
Cut it out with the misleading title s**t. It doesn't make you look like good journalists, it makes you look desperate for attention.
Dajmin on 2 May '11 said:
I quite liked the first Doom book, Knee Deep in the Dead. Was a long time ago and it was never gonna be a literary masterpiece, but it stuck fairly closely to the game lore. Obviously that was a long time ago though.
Felly117 on 2 May '11 said:
You forgot about the Resident evil novels
Laughlyn on 2 May '11 said:
The book released leading upto Eve Online Empyrean Age release was a great read and the Resident evil books (most by S.D Perry who does a lot of the Aliens/predator books) are really enjoyable, i prefered reading the books than playing the games and the books not based specifically on the games and more inbetween books are great stories too, worth a read
TheTingler on 2 May '11 said:
Agree with my fellow commenters here, that was an incredibly misleading and inaccurate title. What it should've been was "Videogame Novel Review Round-Up".
Mass Effect: Ascension and Deus Ex: Icarus Effect are two recent superb videogame books. You should've done them instead.
quain-chi on 2 May '11 said:
So nothing about the already mentioned resident evil books or halo, gears of war, doom etc or you could have reviewed some of the video game theory or art books like play between worlds, more than a game or beyond barbie and mortal kombat.
MattyR95 on 2 May '11 said:
Books that aren't about video games tend to be a lot better anyway. Although, you'll know if you like it or not if you've already played the games.
hitmanfan on 2 May '11 said:
Hitman Enemy Within should be on this list and would get at least a four from me, any Hitman fan will love it I think.
dannyhulse on 2 May '11 said:
If I had to pick a GOOD (not great) Video Game book it would be Mass Effect Revelation, just finished reading it and it was good (for a massive fan such as myself, I really enjoyed learning more about Saren, albeit not enough)
I am currently reading Mass Effect Ascension and not really liking it at the mo' maybe it will grow on me later on but it is moving at a snails pace right now.
BenThomasFoster on 3 May '11 said:
Worst article ever. some of the books in oblivion are better than them. only good one/ones i've read are the frit 2 mass effect books and the eldar scroll books. they certainly wern't LotR tho
solamon77 on 3 May '11 said:
Strange. Why do a list with the "5 best" and rate all but one of them 2 out of 5? I've read Dragon Age: Stolen Throne and that was actually pretty good. I'd give it a 4 out of 5 actually. Especially if you care about the Dragon Age world.
I understand Metro 2033 is pretty awesome too even though the game is based on the book, not the other way around.
theaface on 3 May '11 said:
Best
–adjective, superl. of good with better as compar.
1. of the highest quality, excellence, or standing: the best work; the best students.
2. most advantageous, suitable, or desirable: the best way.
3. largest; most: the best part of a day.
Moorpheus on 3 May '11 said:
No Halo?
No Mass Effect?
FAIL
Wakacha on 3 May '11 said:
I think I can clear up a lot of the confusion about this.
Firstly this was taking from PSM3 so that's why there is no Halo and so on.
Secondly the article in PSM3 is titled Best sellers not the best novels, basically it's them reviewing best selling game adaptions not the highest quality books. Hence why the majority of these are utter s**te.
A lot of this wouldn't have to be explained if CVG actually titled this correctly.
chunkyboymania on 3 May '11 said:
Nothing beats the Smash TV mini novel that was free with a 1993 issue of Total magazine..... Twas far too gruesome for a 10 year old.
sm0k3y2307 on 4 May '11 said:
only video game books i have read are the mass effects books and i found them very enjoyable ive also heard that the halo ones are all good
Sammy_bham on 4 May '11 said:
the three mass effect novels are all great if you are a die hard fan of the series.
the 5 comics that are out, give a great insight to characters, especially the illusive man
somaticon on 24 Oct '11 said:
Crysis Legion by Peter Watts is a really good adaptation which really fleshes out the character of Alcatraz and even gives him a back story. There are other really good adaptations as well. It depends on the writer and his skills some are excellent craftsmen but find themselves limited to the material others use the source material as a means of telling their own story as well.