I must admit… I bought the first two Doom books. And read them.
The first one was terrible. Just terrible. Because it had to follow the plot of the first Doom game, and frankly, there was no plot. Also, since for the most part there’s only one character, the constant internal monologue became monotonous. And then, of course, there was the monotonus killing of monsters, over and over again. I give the writer A for effort, but he was simply hamstrung by the game’s setting.
The second Doom book, however, was a radical departure, as he was able to move the story beyond the events in the first game and onto the invasion of Earth. He was able to introduce several new, interesting characters, and come up with his own storylines. While still pretty schlocky as far as sci-fi novels go, it was a surprisingly satisfying read, and light years ahead of the first Doom book.
I wracked my brain trying to think of other examples, but frankly, with almost every game I’ve played that was directly related to a book or a particular subject, I’d read that book or on that subject before. I suppose playing Europa Universalis inspired me to do some more reading on European history, but it was nothing I hadn’t already read about before…
Bruce