C.T. Phipps's Blog, page 95

Halo: Nightfall review

    The good folk at Microsoft have tried numerous times to create a Halo movie but their attempts have been a decidedly mixed bag. For example, their original attempt with director Neil Blomkamp fell through with much of the props intended for it used, instead, for District Nine. Forward Unto Dawn was an excellent movie but somewhat overwrought with its attempts to tell a deep as well as engaging story about Halo.

    Halo: Nightfall is another attempt at doing a...

Halo: Glasslands review

    Halo remains one of my favorite sci-fi franchises. The setting is a book, comic, and video game series featuring military characters doing battle with an alien theocracy known as the Covenant. The Kilo-5 novels, which starts with Glasslands, chronicles the events following Halo 3 when the Master Chief has disappeared, the Covenant has been defeated, and an uneasy peace exists between humanity with the various former Covenant races.

    The premise is the Offic...

Halo 4 review

    The passing of the torch from Bungie to 343 Industries was something which changed the nature of the Halo games as well as called in serious questions as to what would be the future of the franchise. Halo: Reach was an excellent game but the central storyline is and always would be built around the character of Master Chief. Could they really bring back the character and tell a new story which would launch the franchise into a new trilogy?

    Eh, kind of?

Some...

Exclusive Interview with Stephen Kozeniewski!

Hey folks,

We have a really great treat you for you this week with an interview from one of my favorite "one and done" authors in Stephen Kozeniewski. Stephen is a Pennyslvania author who has written numerous one-shot novels which explore such high concepts as cloning in a single-sex world of dinosaurs, a zombie Detective novel where the undead replace other minorities, and his most recent work in EVERY KINGDOM DIVIDED (reviewed here).
 

Every Kingdom Divided is a dystopian black comedy whe...

Halo: The Fall of Reach

    I have a confession to make, I actually read The Fall of the Reach a decade before I ever picked up a Halo game. I really enjoyed the setting, themes, characters, and world-building which took what was already a surprisingly deep video game then expanded it into a truly rich setting. The fact the people at Bungie and later 343 Industries have chosen to let Eric Nylund's work become influences for the canon games shows their awareness of their IP as well as willingness to le...

Halo: Reach review

    Having gone through the original Halo trilogy, we've gotten to enjoy a huge amount of Bungie's output and I'm pleased to say they knocked it out of the park. I wasn't a big fan of Halo: ODST, though, so I came with somewhat mixed feelings toward  Reach. The Master Chief and Cortana are such an integral part of the saga I didn't know if it was impossible to really care about someone else in the primary character role(s).

    Reach had another strike agains...

The cover sketch for THE SECRETS OF SUPERVILLAINY

Awesome cover sketch by Raffaele Marinetti for THE SECRETS OF SUPERVILLAINY, the third book in the Supervillainy Saga starring Gary Karkofsky a.ka. Merciless: the Supervillain without Mercy. Here, we see Nightgirl and Ultragoddess. I described the latter as "Supergirl by way of Rosario Dawson and Ronda Rousey."

Great work.


THE SECRETS OF SUPERVILLAINY should be out this July.

ESOTERRORISM's audiobook will be narrated by Jeffrey Kafer!

 And for those interested in knowing, Jeffrey Kafer will be doing the audiobook read for ESOTERRORISM as produced by Audible. Jeffrey did an awesome job for my Supervillainy Saga books and I look forward to him doing this. Awesome, guys, really!
There are no good guys in the world of shadows...but maybe some bad men are better than others.
Derek Hawthorne was born to be an agent of the Red Room. Literally. Raised in a conspiracy which has protected the world from the supernatural for centu...

Halo 3: ODST review

    Halo 3: ODST is one of my favorite types of video games. Specifically, it's a game which takes an already popular and successful video game like Halo 3 and then simply makes more content for it with a different story. These are known as "Mission Pack Sequels" and form the basis for a lot of really good games like the Elder Scrolls series or Assassins Creed. I'm not a great believer that you need to reinvent the wheel to make an entertaining video game and think some of the...

Halo 3 review

Halo: Combat Evolved review
Halo 2 review

    Halo month continues with my experiencing the third of the Halo series on the Master Chief Collection, which is a steal at 30 bucks right now. Halo 3 isn't the sort of game you should play without having done the previous two entries in the series as it is a direct continuation of their plotlines. It's a testament to Microsoft they were willing to release their first major Xbox 360 release based on the build-up from two (admittedly un...