Customer Reviews

Halo Effect: An Unauthorized Look at the Most Successful Video Game of All Time (Smart Pop series)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This book appears that it was written by someone who knows very little about the Halo canon. It is as if he wrote it as he was playing through the game and based his observations on the Master Chief on how HE played the game, not how the MC actually has been portrayed.

Just look at Amazon's preview page on this one. The book reads like it was written by a hyperactive 8-year-old, tossing around big words while having no idea what they mean, including at least one self-reference on every page, and with a compelte obliviousness as to any sort of fact- source material or otherwise.

If you see a single positive review for this book, you can rest assured that person was paid for their endorsement.

Like everyone else says, read the preview and you will see that this "person" has NO CLUE to the HALO universe and absolutely no writing skills. Rambo and Master Chief, PLEASE!!! Anyway read this review, chock the book up to crap and don't even waste your time reading the review, I wish I had listened to the other reviews that said don't bother.

You got all of your facts wrong in the second page and you are entirely wrong about the Chief. How about you go ahead and figure out what you're talking about and get your damn facts straight before you write a book the subject.

Wow. I never knew such a piece of crap could be written about halo. The facts and comparisons were a large pile of the ultimate crap. I got to where he mentioned the Ark,
"343 Guilty Spark refers to humans as "Reclaimers" but not "Forerunner."
Wrong.
"You are Forerunner. But this ring is mine."
At the last level of Halo 3, 343 Guilty Spark called the Master Chief "Forerunner" shortly after turning on them.
And as for MC not being human enough?
Actions, like the slow raising of his head, after Spark spoke, equalling a "What?!" moment, idiot.

i agree with electromotive force wholeheartedly. i took advantage of the look inside to read the first three pages, not that i read all of them with how bad they were. it was so bad it literally made me sick to my stomic. the book writer has absolutely no idea about anything. the absolute only way you wouldn't need to worry about eating, sleeping, or breathing would be if you were completely dead. not to mention, master chief may feel no emotions towards his enemies, cause they wanna kill all humanity after all, but the reason he even tried to activate halo in the first game was cause he thought doing so would SAVE humanity. when he found out different he blew it up. not to mention the title says unauthorized, UNAUTHORIZED. that covers at least copy right infringement, maybe even plagiarism. i would give this book a negative 5 stars

Seriously just reading through the preview is enough to realize what a piece of crap this book is. It reads like a poorly thought out web blog. Doesn't make any sense at all and adds nothing what so ever to the Halo Universe. I'm pretty sure this guy wanted to make a quick buck off of the halo name so he wrote this on a cafeteria napkin. One star out of five just because it doesn't go any lower.

I'll admit: I do not own this piece of garbage. It'd be a waste of trees to purchase it. Thank God for Amazon's preview image up in the top of this page, because it saved me from making the mistake of buying and reading this, and then subsequently throwing it in the dumpster where it belongs.

For a critic that claims to have read Eric Nylund's "The Fall of Reach", your resultant opinion of nearly every HALO facet you commented on was complete crap of the highest order -- you couldn't have been further from the truth!

From telling blatant lies [that the Master Chief does not need food, rest, etc.] to chracterizing him as a faceless, emotionless killing machine, to basically all of your ranting and that especially stupid grin of yours, you're deliberately misleading people.

Maybe you're the dweeb you continually ridicule in your childish words. Maybe you're the F'd up one.

I suggest you re-read The Fall of Reach, if you even read it at all.

No one should even bother to preview this waste of paper!

I guess people shouldn't be chastised for just reading a preview. However the book itself is a collection of essays by some very knowledgeable folks. It's not a Halo Encyclopedia--it's much more a critical analysis of Halo --both from a real-world perspective and the fiction itself. The essay "You Are the Master Chief" is definitely the weakest, which is why its odd Amazon shows it as a preview.

Among the highlights of the mostly-great stuff in the book:
*Science advisor Kevin Grazier (he worked on BSG, among other shows) explains how the Halo Rings could actually work
*Dean Takahashi delves into the oft-forgotten history of how Halo was a buggy, unplayable mess mere months from release.
*How Halo has struck a cord with military personnel
*The cultural veneer of Halo and what influenced the developers, from Aliens to The Culture.
*The problems with adapting Halo to a film

Some of this is outdated now (the essays were all written pre-Halo 3, in 2006), but it remains a good collection of some great essays about the game. If you're a hardcore fan there's still some good stuff to get out of it, although it's probably best directed at a casual fan who doesn't know all the lore and history behind the games and fiction.

TLDR version: If you're a Halo fan who likes reading *about* Halo, you won't regret the purchase.

Stunning.I cant believe the detail this book dives into.It gave me a whole new look at Halo.Stunning.