Ever since I learned they were a thing they cracked me up tbh. Idk I guess the target audience are like hardcore fans who love lore expansion, but gamers dont strike me for the most part as the reading type. Tho maybe thats projection
Depends on the game/genre. The Diablo and Warcraft novels supplemented the in-game lore and were competently written. And there's a lot of crossover between fantasy nerds and RPG players.
The actual writer for the first two Mass Effect games wrote some of that game's novels, too (which I have not read).
I've read the first two Halo books. The first one details the start of the Spartan II program and John Halo and the initial Covenant bombardment of the planet Reach. The second book covers the events of the first game and, iirc, you could probably use it as a very unwieldy strategy guide for Halo 1 lmao
I've read a good chunk of the Halo series, they got pretty damn good, and also pretty damn terrible depending on if the author liked a certain character or not.
Actually worth a read if you're into Halo, there's definitely some fun looks into some of the different species, and Covenant politics.
I read the Resident Evil novelization as a kid and remembered enjoying it. I think Rebecca was the author's fave character as she stared in another novel based off the game.
I read a Sonic the Hedgehog novelization as a kid without having played any of the games and it had the plot point of Sonic and Eggman being adoptive brothers so I was very confused down the line when that didn't come up in the story when I played the Sonic Adventure era games lol
Anyone else read those Pathways to Adventure choose-your-own-adventure video game books as a kid? I had the one for Pokémon R/B/Y growing up, but they also had two for Gen II, another for Snap, and adaptations of Ocarina of Time and Donkey Kong 64. I think they're fairly paint-by-numbers retelling for the game plots with some gameplay tips thrown in (e.g. locations of items), but as a small child I found it absolutely entrancing for whatever reason (guess it doesn't take much at that age).