I'm still not convinced on Halo being a good game... but I am wondering if anyone has read the books?
One of my long time good friends suggested that I try to pick up the books and that I might enjoy the storyline.. anyone?
Have you played any of the other games? While I personally like the Halo universe, and the storylines have been ok, I wouldn't recommend you playing them just for that. If you don't enjoy the gameplay then I don't know that the story will be enough to warrant getting the game. Also, consider what difficulty you tend to play games at. Halo is best on Legendary, or at least Heroic, and so you might find the gameplay disappointing on the easier settings. Co-op definitely helps enjoyment of the games as well.
I have read all the books, and they do add to the story of Reach a bit, but not a ton to be honest. This has been my favorite Halo, just because with the challenges and commendations, there is always something to do.
Yeah, the book Reach does add a bit to the game, but its not really specific to this game, and more in fleshing out the whole Halo world. The games actually pretty much ignore the books from what I can remember, which I personally found a bit disappointing. Granted, they don't contradict each other, but I think the games would have been better if they'd have worked with the guy that wrote the first and third books.
Something else that bugs me is co-op in Halo, Reach, and early on in Halo 2 ignores the other players. Reach would have been awesome if you could play as the other Spartans. It would have been like a non-crappy version of Brute Force (which is funny since back when they were making Halo 2, they talked about how they were going to do something like that, with different classes of Spartans, even the third book delves into it).