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The Shadow

By The Shadow,
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The Shadow

The Shadow

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I've just started reading the first one and apart from the fact that the proofreader should be fired, something else bothered me. As far as I'm aware I've never been able to leap over three-meter high walls.

I take it all these were written in conjunction with Bungie? I've only read the first 150 pages or so of The Fall of Reach, it's a bit shit though.

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Cyhwuhx

Cyhwuhx

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Eeehr, no?  :)

.::: Hmm, I've heard from several people that is was sci-fi novel which got adapted. Don't care for it either way though. The story was propably an even weaker element to the game than the repeating environments, imo.

Also I couldn't ditch the feeling I was playing an even more sci-fi version of Half-Life.

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Harlen Quinn

Harlen Quinn

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I bought all the books, quite enjoyed em. I'm not embarassed to admit to buying them, they're not meant to be high art. Cheap, disposable and fairly enjoyable entertainment. They improved the enjoyment of the game further for me, the back story only adds to the atmosphere. I noticed a few very minor continuity errors but the 3 metre jumping is nit picking, IMHO, how high do you think they jump in game? :)

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Boutros

Boutros

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It's a game about shooting things. I can't imagine why you'd think it would have a good plot.

Yeah... it plays like a charm.

It looks brilliant.

the game is a nice, coherent whole.

Some innovative ideas have been implented.

And yet...

It's still only an FPS... the only thing you do is shoot, shoot and shoot.

I liked it, but I can definitely see why some people don't.

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AndyB

AndyB

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Yeah... it plays like a charm.

It looks brilliant.

the game is a nice, coherent whole.

Some innovative ideas have been implented.

And yet...

It's still only an FPS... the only thing you do is shoot, shoot and shoot.

I liked it, but I can definitely see why some people don't.

And drive.

And fly.

(whilst shooting)

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The Shadow

The Shadow

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I bought all the books, quite enjoyed em. I'm not embarassed to admit to buying them, they're not meant to be high art. Cheap, disposable and fairly enjoyable entertainment. They improved the enjoyment of the game further for me, the back story only adds to the atmosphere. I noticed a few very minor continuity errors but the 3 metre jumping is nit picking, IMHO, how high do you think they jump in game? :D

Since the Master Chief is a human being, albeit enhanced, clearing a three meter jump would mean way more than his own height, so I should be able to clear things above eye height. I can't even clear half that. Of course, it is a small point, the book just seemed completely over the top, in terms of their reactions etc. as in the game reactions are limited to your own. I guess it makes for a better storyline in the book though.

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K

K

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Like the sad fucker I am, I've read all three Halo books, and I can confirm that the first two are piss-poor. In a suprising post-credits ironic twist, however, the third one's actually quite good- in a pulpy, B-movie sort of way, of course.

It's by the author of the first book, and it's certainly better written than 'The Fall of Reach'- it's not exactly Tolstoy (or even Heinlein), but it is breezily swift in terms of pace, and full of action. It's also interesting to find out what happens between Halo 1 and 2.

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Headache

Headache

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.::: Hmm, I've heard from several people that is was sci-fi novel which got adapted.

Your probably thinking of Larry Niven's Ringworld series of books. I remember a lot of people thought of those when Halo was originally described. Thing is the Ringworld series is sci-fi comedy to the max, so if you do feel like reading them don't expect anything like Halo to jump at you from the pages.

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Cyhwuhx

Cyhwuhx

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Your probably thinking of Larry Niven's Ringworld series of books. I remember a lot of people thought of those when Halo was originally described. Thing is the Ringworld series is sci-fi comedy to the max, so if you do feel like reading them don't expect anything like Halo to jump at you from the pages.

.::: Well, if they're anything like HGTTG, I'll just have to read them. :D

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mr. fancypants

mr. fancypants

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.::: Hmm, I've heard from several people that is was sci-fi novel which got adapted. Don't care for it either way though. The story was propably an even weaker element to the game than the repeating environments, imo.

Also I couldn't ditch the feeling I was playing an even more sci-fi version of Half-Life.

There's a book called 'Starhammer' that pretty similar to Halo's story. I haven't read it myself but Jason Jones (co-founder of Bungie) has said in an interview that's it one of his favourite books.

A billion or so years ago Baraf was a wet

: jungle world, the home of a gentle froglike race of philosophers called

: the Wisdom Wishing. But they were menaced by the parasitic Vang, a

: terrible race that regarded all other organisms as either host or food. In

: a desperate attempt to protect themselves, the Wisdom folk built a device

: which imploded stars and caused them to go nova.

: "However the Vang had already landed on their homeworld by the time they

: could put the device to work, so their entire civilization was doomed.

: They used their entire sun as reaction mass for some kind of time machine,

: throwing themselves into the unimaginable future where they hoped to find

: the Vang destroyed. The Starhammer continued to work after they were gone,

: destroying the suns of the Vang worlds.

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K

K

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There's a book called 'Starhammer' that pretty similar to Halo's story. I haven't read it myself but Jason Jones (co-founder of Bungie) has said in an interview that's it one of his favourite books.

I've read Starhammer- it's godawful. The book's a weird, brutal right-wing space opera, that's very badly written, and chock-full of underdeveloped ideas. It's also very misogynistic and homophobic- as if Garry Bushell wrote a sci-fi book, really.

God knows why Jason Jones likes it so much, given that his own writing (in the Marathon and Halo games) is so much better.

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ModoX

ModoX

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Clearly I'm the only person here who likes the Halo plot. I can see how you wouldn't think the plot is anything special if you've just played through the game, but read the books, read places like halo.bungie.org and so on, you soon discover just how great it is.

I've read all the books, Fall of Reach I thought was excellent, The Flood was a bit pants, First Strike was even better than Fall of Reach. There's a lot of inconsistencies with the gameplay, but the books would be incredibly boring if all the action sequences consisted of "The Chief shot the Covenant warrior in the head three times with a pistol". It'd be retarded.

I suppose Halo is one of the things I get a bit fanboyish about, so you may want to take that into account when I ramble on about how good the books/plot are, but I think if you really get into it you'll find they're quite enjoyable. Of course if you played through Halo saying "it's an FPS the story is of no use to me" you might miss a lot of the things someone who paid attention would enjoy.

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