The tale of Rapture’s inception, construction and fall contains some interesting moments, but the best of them have already been heard in the game’s audio diaries, only stretched beyond the breaking point to fill a chapter rather than a 30-second audio clip. By the end almost every event has been taken from them, even going so far as to paste the dialogue from them in verbatim, leaving few surprises for anyone who was paying attention when they played through the original.

Characters who worked as enigmatic cameos feel like parodies when they and their philosophies are expanded like this; a feeling only enhanced by the author’s bizarre insistence on rendering every verbal tic and dialect on the page. Bill McDonagh, for example, is a working class bloke from Lahndahn, and then you’ve got the guido stereotypes for New York gangsters and, just in case you forget that the book is set in the 1940s, it’s loaded with deliberate archaisms so that people actually use words like ‘swell’.

Even if Andrew Ryan was less a nuanced personality and more a… well, an Ayn Rand character in the game, here he’s a pantomime villain. He takes every single opportunity to start monologuing about parasites, taxes and the Great Chain™. Within the first chapter he compares, completely without irony, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to socialism, and it’s downhill from there.

Fontaine, too, if he has a moustache would spend every scene twirling it. His character is built from the big book of villainous cliches, with an uncanny gift for disguise thanks to being brought up in the circus. No, really…

One thing the book does share with the games is that the true star is Rapture itself, and for those who gorged themselves on the details in things like the BioShock 2 ARG, the material here will delight. It still doesn’t make much sense if you think too hard about it, but moments like seeing the undersea city for the first time are nearly as potent as they were when you saw it for yourself. The game’s opening is still one of the best ever, and the book enjoys some of the reflected glory.

It’s not enough, though. The narrative and visuals in the games were strong enough to make you forgive some occasionally clunky mechanics, but this is just a bad reprise weighed down by dialogue and character development from a bad fan fiction. Fans will find a lot more canonical depth by spending a few hours exploring the BioShock Wiki.

Like any good fanboy I’ve been buying the new stuff, encouraged by the current BOGOHP deal on Transformers in Toys R Us. And this isn’t counting the three versions of the original movie that I now own (original DVD, 20th anniversary DVD, ultimate tin), my old toy collection, Dreamwave G1 comics, and the splendid 20th anniversary Optimus Prime that I nabbed from eBay.

Movie Leader Optimus Prime

I think this guy looks better than the actual movie iteration, even if he’s no G1 Prime. Similar size to my 20th anniversary Prime and with flashing lights and sounds so that you know that he’s from the 21st century.

Movie Prequel and Adaptation Graphic Novels

I caved in and read them both a couple of nights ago. I actually liked it, even if I can see the criticisms of the story from the press coming from a mile away. Not bad art in these and the prequel in particular sets things up well and doesn’t suffer from having to cram in as much story as the adaptation.

Animated Movie Graphic Novel

This takes a course much closer to the standard G1 comics, albeit again not quite Lee’s standard, but gets a free pass for any inadequacies there by having Unicron. That makes up for the exclusion of the “such heroic nonsense” line…just about.

Aside from that niggle, this is an essential purchase for fans. Almost everything that was on screen is here, and this version adds a new scene to the Battle of Autobot City of Omega Supreme and the combiners going at it outside The Ark. It’s one of the better cash-ins for the 20th anniversary of the old movie.

IDW G1 Trade Paperbacks

I’ve always been something of a Transformers fundamentalist – this makes Beast Wars, G2, etc abominations – but I think the film might have cooled my hostility towards the re-imaginings. The IDW arc takes a similar route to the Ultimate Marvel series in that it updates the G1 Transformers for a modern setting without being too overzealous. They no longer crashed here millions of years ago, for example, and have undercover agents here without our knowledge.

There are quite a number of TPBs so far – Infiltration, Escalation, Stormbringer, and Spotlight Volume 1 – which I admit that I don’t like as much as the more faithful Dreamwave adaptation, but it’s not bad stuff. I’m keeping the Dreamwave end up with the IDW reprints of their War Within series. A bit of light reading, then!

Revoltech Optimus Prime and Megatron

These are new Japanese toys and they’re awesome. Based on the Pat Lee G1 comic designs, they have Revoltech joints and a load of extra body parts each so that they can be posed how you like, as evidenced above (a celebration of their movie royalty cheques?). Check out the reviews of Prime here and Megatron here.

Transformers Robot Heroes

Being that the original TV series had a Japanese name as great as ‘Fight! Super Robot Life Form Transformers’, it’s only right that I have some super-deformed Transformers. These little guys are brilliant for ornaments and work out quite cheaply in TRU’s deal. You’ll have to source the right four from somewhere else though, since they’re apparently not out here yet. I went with eBay.

I’m seeing an advanced screening of the film on Saturday. Please don’t let it be rubbish.

Halo: Ghosts of Onyx

The fourth Halo novel and the third by Eric Nylund, Ghosts of Onyx is an attempt to fill in some of the blanks (some would say plot holes after Halo 2) left by the previous books and, hopefully, set up certain events for Halo 3. Chronologically, it’s set partly before the original game, but mainly runs concurrently with the latter stages of Halo 2.

Overall I felt much the same way about it as I did about the previous novels. Ghosts of Onyx is fairly entertaining enough and a good read for fans of the game looking for a quick story fix, but ultimately a bit of a typical trashy sci-fi novel. Everyone speaks in technobabble (it’s not a rocket launcher; it’s an M19 SSR SPNKr rocket launcher) to the point where talking about technology often becomes a monologue, and the characters can seem like one-dimensional military stereotypes. That might be intentional due to the nature of the Spartans (read The Fall of Reach or the ever-reliable Wikipedia entry) but when most of them have never even been referenced in the games and do little other than fight – sometimes with a SRS99C-S2 AM sniper rifle, naturally – it can be difficult to empathise.

And yet, despite these flaws, I found it hard to put down until I’d finished it. It’s not a bad book; just, like I said, a bit trashy sometimes. Nylund is clearly very good at writing action, and coupled with a universe as interesting as Bungie’s it’s certainly a fun read for fans. Just don’t expect a work of great literature, OK? It’s just an extra helping of Halo.

Halo Graphic Novel

Much was made of this when it came out as Bungie partnered with Marvel and a selection of prominent artists to bring their universe into yet another media. It was popular, too: we asked about it in a big Australian comic shop back in August and they said that they were selling out even their largest shipments in hours.

It’s definitely an attractive book – hardback, with a lovely painting of the Master Chief spread across the two covers – and while the artwork ranges considerably in style it’s all definitely Halo. Recognisable characters and enemies all make appearances, never deviating far in their look from what the games have shown us. And in addition to the four stories here, there’s a gallery section with some wonderful paintings of scenes from the series, from both Bungie and Marvel’s artists.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think too much of the stories themselves in the HGN. Most of them aren’t as fleshed out as they could be and, in particular, one of them seems to contradict what has been said in the novels, making one (or indeed both) of them non-canonical. It’s a really geeky criticism, I know, but a lack of continuity in stuff like this is a bugbear of mine. Then again, Bungie is supposed to have overseen the stories for both, so maybe they can be reconciled. We’ll see later this year.

Whether the stories are particularly strong or not, the HGN is still a worthwhile book for fans. I’m happy I got it for some of the gorgeous artwork alone and, in my case at least, that’s the main reason to read a graphic novel.

I got my copy of the new Penny Arcade book in the post this morning, Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings. It not only continues their tradition of great but incongruous titles (starting with their first volume, Attack of the Bacon Robots) but brings together all of their comics from 2001 in one neat package, complete with some extra artwork and some of the best news posts.

I’ve been a fan of PA for some time – I can put my introduction to their oeuvre somewhere in the first book, circa 1999 – but, as with The Simpsons when watching the early seasons on DVD, it’s hard not to look at the older stuff with a more critical eye. Not only does it not look as good as the new ones but the writing isn’t as sharp and the characters haven’t yet found their niche.

Same thing here. The first book was good but it wasn’t until near the end that the pieces were all falling into place. This book is where things start to feel right. They of course have the endless source of material that was the early PS2/Xbox/GameCube conflict and the end of the Dreamcast (*sniff*), but it also helps that it doesn’t look like it was drawn by a GCSE art student.

They already have the next two books, titled The Warsun Prophecies and Birds Are Weird, in the pipeline, but this one gets the thumbs up from me. There are some really classic strips in there and for gamers it provides a handy chronicle of what seems like an age ago.