I thought it was solid. It was one of the few and IMO best books in the Bungie-Halo era to give insight to the Human-Covenant conflict and all it's political implications without going so overboard we hit Star Wars Prequel territory.

Agreed. I liked several of the older Halo books, but Contact Harvest stood out as fleshing out the Human Covenant first contact in a way that fit very well with the games. And it gave us some great insight into the Covenant's politics and the fact that Humans were Forerunner decedents. Plus I really enjoyed the Mack / Sif relationship and Sif's helpful descent into a brief Rampancy.

(Though I personally have no issues with the prequels being politics heavy, it probably could've been organized/written better)

At least, that's what I see on various websites.

There is no contactharvest.isnotcanon.net. That's the real test :-p

Was Staten's book generally well received?

Contact Harvest had a generally positive reception.

TELL me you sat through all those boring gang briefings in Crackdown 1 before and after every single boss. And the word boss is way too generous! They were just enemies with four bars of health instead of one or two.

And Crackdown 2--I don't remember if they even had bosses. Just kill humans by day and Floo--I mean freaks at night. And those weird stronghold missions.

So no--I doubt anybody really cares about the story for the 'cops' version of Grand Theft Auto. lol

Oh, it's just a thinly veiled insult at somebody who is greatly respected and admired by many who visit here.

Quality content, Korny.

P.S. Joe Staten tweeted that he was working on Crackdown over a year and a half ago.

The Crackdown games have never been praised for their story, so at least he doesn't have a ton of pressure there, so if it's as generic and bland as ReCore was, people won't really hold it against him (considering that the game's been delayed and he's still in the writing process, I'm a bit skeptical that things are going smoothly).

Best of luck to him, though.