If you can make a movie out of a video game plot, you have done it wrong. Although games like Resident Evil, Beyond Two Souls, or  Dead Space have well written plots for the most part, they don't fully utilize the medium they are placed in. They could have done as well if they were a movie, although heavily edited to better suit it. It's because the plot is straight forward told to you. You don't need to explore much to find any missing parts of the plot. They are just as good of a game as the rest (except Beyond Two Souls), but the reason behind this linear storytelling is because they were written like a movie, this isn't a bad thing since it works for movies, but it fails to fully embrace the medium it's in.

An excellent example of video game storytelling is Bioshock by Irrational Games. You have the "driving plot" pushing you through the game, but what makes it really shine is it's "hidden plot." The game rewards you for going down every hallway. When you do you can find supplies and audio logs to listen to. The audio logs provide you with the hidden plot, something that movies could never hope to accomplish. In a movie you can't hide audio files lying around the scene, the idea is absurd, but in Bioshock the plot is intentionally hidden away from you. You have to search for it in order to know why there is a city at the bottom of the ocean, something the driving plot won't be bothered to tell you. Bioshock also has hidden plot found around the world in the form of posters, blocked off doorways, blood spatters leading to a last word audio log from beneath the skeleton. These environmental hints are just as important to unravel the lore of the world as the audio logs. By giving the player the freedom to view the world freely and at their own pace you can put so much more detail into everything to tell the better story that movies couldn't hope to enjoy.

Another excellent example is Dark Souls by FROM Software. The driving plot is almost non-existent, and everything is told through the hidden plot which takes the form as difficulty, environmental hints, and flavor text. If you lack the skill to get to the late game you won't be able to experience the hidden plot. By doing this every late piece you unlock is rewarding. Getting a weapon from the boss you just defeated and get to read the flavor text to figure out what he added was to the plot. Nothing is more satisfying.

The reason why the story in so many games fall flat is because storytelling in games is relatively new. It hasn't be around as long as movies to learn all of the quarks of the medium. Although we have learned a lot about it such as when telling a story you need to reinforce it through the game play. The story should never be at the expense of the mechanics, and it should be working together flawlessly with it. You need to have a solid driving plot with an interesting hidden plot that gives reason to the players agency. We have the ability to tell the story in a piece-wise way that no other art form can, but as time goes on we will learn more about how to tell a good story, and we will create plots that can rival any story made in existence. Because games are the ultimate art form.

What if it turns out all those checkpoints were really dead though?

Bioshock Infinite places you in the role of Booker DeWitt, an ex-pinkerton agent sent to the angelic, ludite spawned, racist city of Columbia. This wonderful floating palace is home to the rich, the poor, the blacks, and the normal people. Ahem...Booker is tasked with saving Elizabeth, a princess locked in a tower, guarded by a massive bird which likes to fuck with you at every turn. Elizabeth, however, holds a secret. With her magical pinky-less hand she can manipulate time and space to create tears in the fabric of time, allowing her and Booker to escape to infinite dimensions of Columbia to escape the evil clutches of her sermon-spouting religious father; Father Comstock. 

The game sports a great story, with you dodging massive flying mechanical birds to zipping through time like some inter-dimensional Indiana Jones with a penchant for drinking strange liquids from bottles and throwing spinny hooks into people's faces! Starting off with a crazy entrance to Columbia and a strange baptism for Booker, almost killing him in the process, we begin Bioshock: Skyhook everything with a fucking pulse. 

Seems like Booker was hooked from the get go. Eh? EH?

After a long and arduous journey of escaping Comstock, fending off rebels against Comstock and finally fighting your way to him, Booker does what game protagonists do best and bludgeons Comstocks head on a holy water bowl. Symbolic as Hell, right? So here's where the twist comes in! Elizabeth is captured and Booker is launched through a separate dimension of Columbia. After returning to safe Elizabeth, it is alluded that Booker has been gone for a long time, and as such Elizabeth has managed to figure out the story, and all the little tidbits. SO!

Booker and Elizabeth plan to escape to Paris finally, but it turns out that that ain't on the cards for Booker. No baguettes and pencil mustache for him, non, non! Elizabeth leads Booker through a series of portals into the place where ALL other Bookers and Elizabeths from separate portals meet in an ocean of lighthouses. Elizabeth remarks: "There is always one man, one lighthouse, one city." 

Now that's just bullshi--

GOD, DANGIT, LEVINE.

So in the end, Booker and Elizabeth escape the lighthouse ocean and then here comes the kicker! 

COMPLICATED SPOILER AHEAD, DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU WANT HEAD TO IMPLODE:

Booker is taken to a similar baptism that he goes through in the beginning of the game. It is then alluded that Booker took a similar baptism many years before, but opted out of it because "dousing yourself in water doesn't absolve your sins." Booker becomes a gambling drunk, loses all of his cash, and realizes he must go to Columbia for a job to absolve his debts. HOWEVER. It turns out that YOU, Booker DeWitt, are in fact ZACHARY HALE COMSTOCK and that Elizabeth is Booker's legitimate daughter who Zachary Hale bartered with him over giving her to him as to erase his debts. HOLY FUCKING SHIT, KER-AZZY RIGHT? 

The explanation goes like so! Booker DeWitt lives in an infinite number of dimensions. Each dimension is created when a decision is made. For example, if I drink coffee in this universe, another universe splinters off where I drink water, or coke, or piss, yum yum. The baptism that Booker goes through forked off in two ways. Booker refused it and stayed as Booker, the war-hero, and another in which he became Zachary Hale Comstock, founded Columbia, and mastered inter-dimension travel (hence why he's old as Gahndi's nutsack). In the end, Booker realizes that in order to fully kill Comstock, he must die, and with an army of Elizabeth's, he is drowned under the water and one by one the Elizabeths from Comstock's universes are erased from existence. 

Or are they?

2. KoTor: Knights of the Old Republid: I AM YOUR FATH--YOU, I MEAN.

Knights of the Old Republic was a crowning achievement of Bioware. Sporting a control system similar to Mass Effect, it put you in control of one of the Old Republic's soldiers, an adept character who is tasked with stopping the evil agenda of Darth Malak, the apprentice to one of the most evil Sith lords in all of Star Wars continuity; Darth Revan. You spend a large portion of the game trying to fight you way through to Malak, learning about the characters, and your link to Bastila, a sexy jedi with a double lightsaber, a British accent, and a badonkadonk as round and hot as Tatooine itself.

Oh, I'mma use the Force alright, girl.

So you're working with a ragtag group of people to stop an Empire of evil. Bastila Shan was revealed to have killed Darth Revan in a large battle before the events of the game, however, this is the kicker:

YOU ARE DARTH REVAN

It turns out that Bastila only knocked him out and using the force, the Jedi council brainwashed Revan and wiped his memory and any trace of his actions as Darth Revan, thus returning him to his previous state of super-duper jedi hero. It was a twist that was delivered through hours upon hours of gameplay. But don't worry, it all ends well for our hero who saves the day and nothing bad ever happened to him again after that. He settled down and lived happily ever after and wasn't used to boost the sales of a dying MMO or anything.

The Old Republic what? 

3. SILENT HILL 2: 100% EGYPTIAN COTTON

Silent Hill has been a franchise which has slowly sort of began to rot like the skin-walkers that populate the foggy town, apart from the Norman Reedus reboot cause that looks flash as fuck. However, going back it's roots, Silent Hill 2 proved to be a formidable, atmosphere masterpiece from Team Silent. 

The story goes like this: You are James, a man who has lost his wife. After receiving a letter from her, telling you to meet her in Silent Hill, it becomes abundantly clear that that is where you're going. The game is like any other Silent Hill art, a worthy horrific endeavor choc-a-bloc with crazy characters and psychosis inducing horror.

Hahahahahaahahahaeeeeegugug OH GOD OH GOD OH FUCKING GOD.

The problem with Jame's wife is that she kicked the bucket a long while back thanks to the Big C. This meant two things; either it's a fake by some sick prankster, or it's the demonic spawn of Satan sitting in a rusted out warehouse, chopping up bodies and fucking leg-people waiting for you to show up. 

The smart money would go on prankster, but this isn't smart.

James spends the whole game jumping through demonic hoops, from fending off Toblerone-man, to going through a demonic hospital with faceless nurses. After shooting and killing his way through an army of the undead, he finally makes it to his wife. 

THE KICKER: Jame's wife has been dead all along and James murdered her out of some sick kind of euthanasia with a pillow.

Silent Hill has always been a game that looks in to its characters for their flaws, and the land has always been sort of a punishing, surreal world in which characters guilt mixes with the trans-dimensional horror, allowing the people to go in and out with some sort of dramatic change, except this time, that doesn't happen. The endings all come to a halting, depressive end in which your choices range from James driving his car into Toluca lake out of guilt, to saving the doppelganger of his wife, Maria, who ends up coughing like Mary did when she first started to get ill.

Isn't the world a happy place?

Those were the three biggest twist of gaming, for me at least. Watch this space for more articles. 

One hazard to avoid is if the book is just a retelling of the game because more often than not the author didn't fully play or understand the game before writing. The best route for video game books are if they are a prequel, a midquel, or a sequel/epilogue to the events of the game.

BioShock and BioShock Infinite

BioShock is definitely a universe that can and should be expanded. The first book is BioShock: Rapture. BioShock: Rapture is a prequel to the first game that that takes place after World War II. The book focuses mainly on Andrew Ryan as he begins to create his underwater utopia of Rapture and Ryan's relationships with Sullivan, Frank Fontaine, and Atlas. A problem with the book though is that with some of the explanations of some of the events in BioShock Infinite and it's two expansions, Burial at Sea Episodes 1 and 2, this book may not be canonical.

The next book is BioShock Infinite: Mind in Revolt.Though I hesitate to call this one a book because it is only about 35 pages long that you can finish in a little under an hour. Mind in Revolt is still definitely worth the read though. If you are a fan of the game you will appreciate the further insight into Daisy Fitzroy and the city of Columbia itself. Columbia isn't the utopia it makes itself out to be and Daisy isn't the saint her people make her out to be.

The Last of Us: American Dreams

This one isn't a book in novel form like the rest of the books in this article, but rather in comic book form. American Dreams is a mini series that ran for 4 issues and is a prequel to The Last of Us. This mini series focuses on the start of Ellie and Riley's friendship that leads into the story DLC for The Last of Us: Left Behind. American Dreams takes roughly one year before the events of The Last of Us and follows Ellie when she is first introduced to Riley whist in her Military Boarding School.

The art style is quite appareling and isn't like how it is shown on the cover. American Dreams was co-written by Neil Druckmann so there's no question of whether or not it's canonical. The mini series was released periodically, but now can be purchased with all 4 issues in one big comic book. This is a must buy for any fans of The Last of Us.

Metro 2033 and Metro 2034

Metro 2034is still a sequel to 2033, but instead of focusing on Artyom the perspective is shifted to Hunter, Artyom's man crush from the first game and book. It shows most of the events of 2033 through Hunter's eyes and new events he himself has to battle through. Hunter's character arch is actually pretty interesting and playing a game of his story would be amazing. Hint hint 4A Games for (hopefully) the next Metro game.

Mass Effect

The Mass Effect books have actually been treated fairly nicely with the three I like the most being written by Drew Karpyshyn, but there are others written by another author named Marc Walters that I like as well. All the books act as prequels, midquels, and sequels. Most of the fan favorite characters make an appearance or brief cameo in at least one of the books adding to the complexity that Bioware already put into them in the games.

Though, just like with BioShock: Rapture, there's no confirmation that these books are canon. I can confirm to you right now that one isn't though. Mass Effect: Deception. Not only is this game factually incorrect to the game's lore it is also not a very well written book. It really is a stain on the Mass Effect legacy. At least one part of Mass Effect 3 was really bad. Just imagine an entire book like that AND the author couldn't even bother to get the lore right. That's Mass Effect: Deception. I had to go into paint and color over it. It doesn't deserve to sit with those other books. Avoid it at all costs.

Out of all the books I've talked about and going to talk about, the Mass Effect universe, needs to be expanded on. We know Bioware are working on Mass Effect 4 (or the next Mass Effect or whatever they are calling it) and these books can not only help explore and expand on already established lore, but also hold us over until the next Mass Effect game. There's so many secrets and mysteries hiding in this universe. Why not expanded on it?

I'm a pretty big Mass Effect fan and I can safely say that all the Mass Effect books that aren't Mass Effect: Deception are pretty good. If you are a fan of the games you should check these out. Even if you want to you can read these at a library. They aren't a tough read, but if I were to pull one negative from these books; it's that you will have to have played all the games to understand everything being said. But if you interesting in reading these you've probably already played through them all.

The Elder Scrolls

Right next to Mass Effect on a list of "Games That Need Their Universes' Explored More" would be The Elder Scrolls and we get two original books to help fit that fit that category. The Infernal Cityand Lord of Souls. The Infernal City takes place 40 years after the Oblivion crisis (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) and Tamriel is once again threatened by an evil force. This time by a floating city that casts a shadow and where ever the shadow is cast people die and rise again as a kind of zombie. With a premise like that you may or may not be turned off, but the book is actually pretty well written and feels like a good adventure worthy of The Elder Scrolls name.

Lord of Souls takes place directly after the events of The Infernal City. Though, I must admit that I haven't finished this one yet. I'm still recommending it though because so far it's even better than the first one and reviews for it say the same. If anything, check out the first book and if you enjoy it get the second one. They are both still better than The Elder Scrolls: Online.

Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth

Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth is a prequel to Uncharted: Drake's Fortune written by Christopher Golden. I'm a pretty big Naughty Dog fan starting from Jak and Daxter so I was both excited and skeptical when I heard about this book. Here we have your standard Uncharted globe trotting story following Nathan Drake and Sully as they look for a fabled treasure within a mythical Fourth Labyrinth, but with a murder mystery added to it.

This time time Nate and Sully are accompanied by the murder victim's daughter, Jada Hzujak. The "who dunit" aspect gives the standard Uncharted story a more fresh take. The author, Christopher Golden, was also able to emulate Nate's and Sully's personality's almost down to a T on paper. Nate's still the lovable jerk and Sully is still that really cool grandfather you've always wanted.

As good as the book is it still isn't as good as the main Uncharted games. The only game it's better than is Golden Abyss, but that wasn't developed by Naughty Dog. The book is missing a certain "je ne sais quoi" that you only get with Naughty Dog. But in the end I still recommend that you pick this one up if you are an Uncharted fan it's still pretty good.

So in the end: video game books are pretty good, but if you want the REAL experience I'd advise you to play the actual game. Trust me. I'm a doctor man with a PHD in Video Games. If you want to read more into the lore of video games then you can safely bet on these books.

Have a good day :).