Customer Reviews

Halo Encyclopedia

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've spent a couple of weeks reading the Halo Encyclopedia in drips and drabs. I've read chapters in a sitting and only a few pages in another. In the end the book lives up to it's title in a lot of ways that were intended and in ways it might not have been. It's intended as a book for the holiday season but it's also a reference work for one of the most successful video game studio's master creation.

For the hard core, mildly obsessive lovers of all things Halo there's new material here to spur discussions while walking paper routes with friends or arguing in dorm halls. Be warned that it draws heavily from the fiction and backstory already published in the licensed novels of the Halo universe. (The author of the encyclopedia is also the author of one the novels.) There are new nuggets here and there so Halo scholars will have new things to ponder. With detail dripping off of every page it can be mildly overwhelming to those just dipping their toe in the water but pictures go a long way to breaking up the text.

For the more casual Halo fan the book offers deeper glimpses into what goes on behind the scenes without completely tearing down the curtain. Humor goes is applied in the right spots to break the sometimes serious tone of the plight of humanity as it faces extinction before the Covenant. (There's a wickedly funny exploration of Grunt strategy that's someone what Sun Tzu like.) It's easy to explore as much as you want without feeling overwhelmed and that's a good median for casual enthusiasts.

This is a lot of book for it's current price on Amazon. Expect people who receive this on Christmas to curl up on the couch at some point and not want to be disturbed for a while. In the book industry's 30+ year history of publishing tomes of detail heavy books for science fiction enthusiasts this may easily be one of the best. Unlike so many bland books that have come before it where brilliant illustration was accompanied by horrible text, Bungie/Microsoft have picked one of the SF genre's brightest new talents for wrestling what could have been dry copy into something enjoyable and readable.

This isn't a book someone should foist on their grandmother to convince her of John 117's merits and strengths. (Odd's are she would collapse from the weight.) It is a book that will be read again and again as details slip away and the desire to explore one of the most well thought out and well developed intellectual properties in several decades.

I debated giving this 4 stars because I wouldn't recommend it as a gift to the long suffering girlfriend, the confused and slightly worried parents or anyone else who really has no interest in Halo. A 4 star rating would also be insulting to the people who worked so hard on this book. (10 years worth of effort from Bungie, Tobias Buckell's writing, etc.)

If you know someone who has endured midnight launches of the game surrounded by the stench of men enjoying themselves, gone back to complete the game on Legendary, screamed "Skull, skull, who's got the skull!" while playing oddball or still laughs when they hear the word "Chupathingy" then get it sooner than later. They'll thank you for it for years to come and you'll win a spot in their heart as the friend/loved one/parent who, despite not loving Halo as much as they do, understood that this book is something they needed to have. Isn't that what gift giving is all about?

While the content of this book is fine, what especially shines is the incredible, paradigm-shifting foreword. The author manages to encapsulate, in a few hundred words, the most profound, resonant and ultimately chilling snapshot of the human condition in literary history. As a piece of writing, it spans the semantic gulf between prose and poetry and ultimately confounds our understanding of both. It takes words and uses them as daubs of color with which to paint a Sistine Chapel - a work of art that literally forces us to look up, beyond the restrictive gravity of our own humanity, and gaze directly into the divine, with only motes of sparkling brilliance to obscure the view.

I gasped the first time I read this foreword and in that seemingly endless pause for breath, I realized that oxygen was a pitiful replacement for the atmopshere of wonder within those all-too brief paragraphs. These heights, they dizzy us.

Read this, or choke on the wan, thin air of lower literature.

This is a nearly complete listing of everything found in the Halo Universe - of that I was very happily surprised. There are a few timelines that are completely astounding with the level of detail they go in, as well as the linearity that they follow in the often-confusing details and stories littered throughout the creatively crafted Universe. This is a great, interesting read for any Sci-Fi junkie and any level Halo fan.

Don't go too far into that though - I am [admittedly] a giant Halo nerd who has the fan website, on forums, and constantly debates with friends regarding minute details and dark corners of the franchise. This book, however, does not go into the level of detail I was hoping for in a lot of categories. It has pretty visuals, some new concept art, but it just sometimes slaps a few text blocks of commonly-known facts about something without creative insight. Some of the entries (the engineers for one) almost word for word copied and pasted from the Halo Beastarium that came with Halo 3, and if you feel like you know a lot about the Halo Universe, this feeling will become quite common the more pages you turn.

On a side note: this book is somewhat difficult to read in a plane - it is almost too wide to fully open up. But that's a great thing when reading in my living room.

I have to give this 5 stars simply because of the craft and history involved and because of what another reviewer stated - all the years of work put in here would be a shame to see anything less. It IS nearly complete of facts *near*the time of Halo 3: ODST coming out, but offers relatively little NEW information beyond that. Don't hope for Reach spoilers.

My whole family plays Halo together, and my son has read all the Halo books. This is a must have reference for any self-respecting Halo fan, and it makes a nice coffee table book. It is an in-depth look into the environment, characters, weaponery, enemies, vehicles, etc...

I found the Halo encyclopedia to be a letdown overall. The artwork is excellent and well reproduced, and included some stuff I had not seen before. Where the book falls down is the supporting text. It is very shallow. If you have already played all the games and read the Halo novels, you will find little to nothing in here that you don't know already. While the number of subjects covered in the encyclopedia is impressive, that coverage is very shallow and insubstantial. So who is this book for? If you're a hardcore Halo fan, this book has nothing new to offer. And if you're not, why would you even consider buying a Halo encyopedia anyway? Get it if you like the universe and want some nice artwork. But don't expect a book of stunning revelations, deep insights, or much else besides the artwork.

It's great that they fixed all the major errors from the first edition of the encyclopedia and replaced a lot of the images with better quality ones from Reach. But there still seems to be a lack of effort in some areas. My big problem with the book is that the info was not thoroughly updated. I noticed the ship section in particular does not include any of the ships or ship classes introduced in Reach except for the Sabre and that space station, which are on new pages. No Night of Solace, UNSC Savannah, or any of those listed anywhere in the book as far as I can see. For whatever reason, they left out a number of the Covenant weapons from Reach as well. I also noticed that i343 seems to be entirely ignoring the revelations in Greg Bear's Forerunner Saga. I'd still say it's a pretty good reference book and more or less worth getting at Amazon's price if you're a Halo fan, more so if you haven't purchased the previous edition.

The Halo Encyclopedia is a great collection of facts of the Halo Universe from the first game up until Halo Wars. It goes into great detail about people, ships, planets and almost every other aspect of the universe. This book is a great way for people to learn more about Halo, for the casual player who wants to know more, to the hardcore detail oriented people.

However, there are a great number of errors in the Encyclopedia, many of which even a casual fan will notice. Often these errors are simply mislabeling the top of a starship as the bottom, or labeling the front of a vehicle as the back. However, some of the errors are more serious. For example, the Encyclopedia states the Miranda Keyes was killed by the Brutes guarding the Prophet of Truth, when in fact it was Truth himself who killed her. There are other such errors in the book. I felt that the number of errors was disappointing for a book that claims to be the "Definitive Guide" of the Halo universe.

Overall, it is a great collection of Halo facts and trivia, but anyone who buys it should be careful about the errors and fact check some of the contents of the book. I enjoy reading it to this day, and update it regularly with new information, but as a heavy Halo fan, the errors were a slight turn off.

But then again, what Halo product ISN'T a must-have for Halo fans. The Halo universe has expanded far beyond the adventures of the Master Chief. This tome includes information on all the stories, characters, vehicles, weapons, etc. from the games, books, and comics; there's even stuff that some die-hard fans may not have come across before. The reason I give it four stars rather than five is because I was hoping for a more detailed, technical volume with schematics, size comparisons, cutaways, etc. I hope some day Bungie decides to make such a book, but in the meantime the Halo Encyclopedia will do quite nicely.

I just started playing Halo a few months ago. After falling in love with the series, I decided I needed to educate myself and this book is great for that. For all Halo enthusiasts, this book has amazing pictures, images, and drawings that beat the graphics of a monitor or TV any day. Highly recommend for anyone who enjoys Halo.

Got this as a present for my son's birthday. He loved it.. However, I'm not happy with the gift wrapped that I had purchased with it... Being around the holiday season, thought I should have it wrapped so I'll have 1 less thing to worry about. The book arrived in time, unfortunately, the wrapping itself didn't make it in 1 piece. There's a huge tear at one end which I had to fix by putting a bunch of tape! Think twice about getting this option.