Halo Reach Limited Edition Guide [Hardcover]

To all those looking for the definitive Halo Reach companion, this book is it! It has 448 pages of pure Halo Reach love thrown into it. The book covers everything from the campaign, multiplayer, custom maps, Firefight, Forge, Covenant bestiary, Covenant and UNSC weapon and vehicle descriptions/backgrounds, and some background of each of the characters in Noble Team. It's chock full of information for multiplayer/campaign/Firefight tactics, weapon load out suggestions, Legendary tips, story and enemy blurbs, gaining achievements, and over 90 pages of gorgeous artwork straight from Bungie. Some things are slightly off, such as the amount of credits earned for killing enemies, and the order of ranking unlocks, but overall, the rest is pretty accurate. I agree with the previous reviewer that they could have done a lot more to show how to discover all the data pads besides giving vague hints as to their locations (a walkthrough with pictures would have been nice!) but since finding all the data pads doesn't net you an achievement(s) in the game, I can forgive the guide for that oversight. I would have rated the guide as a perfect 5 out of 5, but am giving it a 4 out of 5 for the reasons of the inaccuracies in some rank unlocks and a few credit amounts for killing enemies and achieving certain in-game goals in multiplayer/firefight.

Overall, the guide is definitely worth the $18-$20 it's going for right now at Amazon (as opposed to going to a physical retail store where you might have to pay $34.99 plus tax - Ouch!). It's printed on high quality glossy paper, comes with a dust jacket, and has one of 6 characters on the hard bound cover (I received the one with Emile on it - the visor has the skull portion of his helmet in embossed gold foil! Lovely!). Some might say guides are bathroom reading material, but this one belongs on your coffee table along with the equally resourceful and informative Halo Encyclopedia. If you love Halo, you need to buy this guide.

A beautiful book overall and highly recommended! Buy it now!

Update 1 (Sep 24, 2010): As far as my comments about the datapads, I would also like to mention that Bungie does have a history of leaving the most mysterious of secrets out of their guides. In the guides for Halo 2, Halo 3, and ODST, there were only very slight hints as to the locations or presence of those skulls and terminals in the (respective) guides. Bungie leaves it up to the Halo community to find these secrets. I guess it makes the hunt for them all the more satisfying! Thanks to D. Walsh for jogging my memory!

Update 2 (Oct 15, 2010): I have noticed that ranks above Lt. Colonel Grade 3 are not listed in the guide. Also, the guide does not show ALL the Armor unlocks in there (many armor types are shown after you reach a certain rank in Halo Reach). This won't affect my overall score, since the guide is so informative, but I will admonish Bungie and Brady guides for this. A little more time should have been taken to iron out the inconsistencies in the guide and the complete ranks and unlocks should have been included.

one of the gentleman left a nice review of the book so I will not go into it...But I will say this. I am glad I spent the extra money to get the hardcover edition. Very nice jacket and the embossing on the front with foil on the head was a nice surprise when I pulled off the jacket...Add that to the extra artwork pics on the inside and you have got the perfect Halo Reach literary feast....

Let me start by saying this legendary strategy guide has shattered the mold for all other guides. First off, it looks more like an encyclopedia than a strategy guide and has the weight of one to boot. Sitting in my bookcase, this looks like a hardback novel that has a very nice sleeve over it's hardback cover. Brady Games went all out this bad boy.

Open the pages and you are overwhelmed with the sheer volume of information about the game. The graphics are amazing and walk you through every stage, your team, weapon, map, achievement you could ever want. Did I mention the beauty of the artwork? Stunning to say the least.

Want to know about weapons? It's here. How about armor? It's here. Vehicles you ask? Gotcha covered. Enemies? No worries there either. Multiplayer? Yah, it's got it's own special section. Do you want to know how to get 100 gamerscore with 9 achievements...yep, it's got that covered too.

Overhead maps look like real satellite images...mountains look like those I've visited and water looks like you could just jump right in.

If you drop the coin, you'll get 470+ pages of sheer unadulterated Halo bliss that is pretty enough to sit on your coffee table as a book.