Lego Books

We ordered this and had to return it because it completely fell apart. Amazon exchanged it for us, but the new one fell apart as well. A friend had the exact same thing happen to her with the copies she bought at Borders. We won't be buying any more of this series for this reason.

Who doesn't have a young teen boy these days that hasn't heard the words "Toa Nuva", "Bionicle", and "Masks" in the same sentence? On our bookshelves, guardian bionicles stand watch over slumbering children, waiting for the dreaded enemies of the Toa Nuva (probably new warriors in some lego language).

The toys are very cool. What was once Johnny West, Batman, or Spiderman is now full poseable, fully changeable, and the dynamics of the body structure are such that these 'toys' could even be our bodies in mechanical form! My eyes don't usually glow, and my hands are digitized, but movement wise, they are magical.

Just like this book, collecting the Lego magazine stories, there is a sense of completeness about the story now. Whenever I read the Lego installments, I always thought that it was time for a collection. Papercutz has a remarkable reputation for quality books printed on quality paper, and is a natural choice for such a property.

The team of Greg Farshtey, Carlos D'Anda, and Randy Elliot have created a world around the characters that is very cool. The setting is other worldly, but the battle for survival is no different than any humans have endured. This is no 'band of brothers', but it is a 'band of others'.

The arrival of Makuta on the Island of Mata Nui signaled the transformation of Nui into a place of evil. The Tohunga wait for salvation, and six arrive who control the forces of nature to help them find it. Collect the masks, and defeat the Makuta no matter what the cost.

The art and color in the books is amazing. D'Anda and Elliot have captured the feel of the characters beautifully. The challenge of illustrating any book with non humanoid features is to make them 'real' and the artists have done that very well. I can imagine their studio. Shelves filled with BIONICLES in various poses, giant boxes of LEGO waiting for construction. How do they ever get any work done?

Read in short installments, these stories made little sense. Now that Papercutz has collected the episodes, the story is clear, and even for adults who have had to learn new words in a new language, the story of the Bionicles has just become more interesting.

www.papercutz.com

Thoroughly disgusted with this order. Thought I was ordering a kit to make some robots, but received two huge books for my grandson's birthday present. When I sent them back, I was charged $11.00 in postage and then did not receive my full refund because I did not fill out the correct papers which I never did see. Not happy at all with this! Did not get what I wanted and did not get my money back!

marion ferrari does it again! excellent addition in this series, and very in-depth explainations and complete instructions. great for the experienced builder, or anyone interested in this field.

The publisher's blurb suggests that this is a book containing a number of NEW projects but it is really an EXACT reprint of "LEGO Mindstorm Masterpieces: Building and Programming Advanced Robots" with an updated cd. Although the cd includes PDFs of a few other books it does not include the cds shipped with those books so you are better off buying the books themselves, and the chances are that if you are looking to buy this book, you already have those other books. Similarly, the cd includes some software for drawing LEGO diagrams, etc. but offers no information on how to use these programs effectively so you could just as easily download the software and find guidance on using it on the internet. Unfortunately, the software that is provided does not include any of the programming tools or alternative firmware installs available to enhance your robot's behaviour. Overall, if you do not already own a copy of "LEGO Mindstorm Masterpieces" then this book is worth the money, but if you do, consider yourself warned.

Tons of fun for the Lego builder in your house. Great for using that pile of Legos in the kids room.

VERY DISAPPOINTED!!! I would have to agree with most of the other reviews (too bad I didn't read them before purchasing). The book says "from bricks you have at home". I do not have these bricks, nor does the book or the Lego website tell you which sets these "odd bricks" come from so that I can buy them. I'm not about to buy EVERY Lego set available on the hopes of getting the pieces we need. I will keep looking for where to find these pieces, but it was probably a waste of my money to buy the book.

I got this book for my nine year old son. He went through and complete most of the projects over the Christmas holidays. However, once complete, he does not appear to be interested in it anymore.

I was hoping that the book would spark his imagination. However, most of the projects were so simple that they only took a few minutes to complete.

Anyway, the drawings are good. Each project comes with a complete list of parts and several drawings. It is just like buying the individual kits.

The animals in this book require around 20 pieces of lego each. My son has a pretty diverse set of over 2000 pieces of classic lego, yet he does not have all of the pieces needed to make even *one* of these animals, even *without* trying to stick to the right colors. Most of the animals require at least one piece that I've never even *seen* before.

I got this book and the other modelers book, and they say you can make this figures using the "pieces you already have." I'd like to know WHERE I was supposed to get some of these pieces. One of the crucial pieces that seems to be in almost every figure is one I tried to find in vain. I went to lego.com, I went to ebay...granted, I don't have every odd set with funky pieces that lego has put out, but I do have quite a few. I could not find several of the pieces used in these models. So, for me, these books were a waste.

Sorry, I waited weeks for this to arrive and it's really a dissapointment! I thought this would give my six year old son some inspiration for new vehicles to build with his basic LEGO bricks. Actually the designs featured in this book are so basic that he could teach them a thing or two. I guess if you're really a beginning builder than it's a decent book.

ign.com has far better guides for free. The guide is too vague and sometimes the photos and descriptions do not even match the scene -- It is like they wrote the guide using an alpha or beta version of the game and only had a few days to complete the project.

It adds a little to the game but was not much help when I needed it.

Not well laid out -- making it extremely difficult to find information in a hurry. It was easier to use free, online guides or just keep trying different things rather than waste time trying to find the information in this guide.

Grade of C at best.

I recommend NOT wasting the money on this guide. It seems only half-finished with very vague descriptions of the different character and item uses. The guide may help you get through minor areas of the game, but it does nothing that a few moments of game-play problem solving wouldn't help. The maps are helpful, but as far as percentage-completion is concerned you're better off finding a walkthrough online- it would be far more accurate and thorough. While I'm certainly not looking for "cheat codes" I would appreciate it if the information in this guide was at the very least detailed and correct. For example, it would be better if it read "In order to unlock this character, you must complete X,Y,Z" or give accurate descriptions of each character's abilities (in at least three cases, we found that these were incorrect or too vague to be useful - i.e. Catwoman has the ability of security clearance, but at which points specifically?). This guide is absolutely not worth the money to purchase it. If a particular point confounds you it would be a better use of your time to simply google the level on which you are stuck.

This book is listed as having a reading level of ages 4-8. In my opinion, if you are buying this book for someone who is at least age 4, you would be better off just buying them a set of actual LEGOs. One of the red bucket sets would be an excellent place to start.

The nice thing about LEGOs is that they don't limit a child's creativity. The LEGO sticker books do. While the book is described as allowing a child to "create LEGO city scenes", they are only able to create a limited number of scenes. If you really want your child to create LEGO scenes, save some money and give your child a box of crayons and some paper to draw on.

The bottom line: unless you (or the person you are thinking of buying this for) are a huge LEGO fan and collect all things LEGO, I would not recommend buying this book. Actual LEGOs are the way to go.

Lego Mindstorms For Dummies is an easy guide to mindstorm robot making. If you get stuck turn to this book! This is a brillant book for anybody for a keen eye on Lego Mindstorms and engineering! Everything is clear and is hard to miss read so if you need a little help with your Lego robots, CONSULT THIS BOOK!

... and buy this book. The bulk of it is taken up with detailed instructions on how to build the standard robots that are already quite adequately documented in the relevant Mindstorms sets. This should be labeled as "educational material." "You buy this, we'll teach you a lesson."

I'm usually a fan of dummies books and have several on my bookshelf. I'm also a huge fan of LEGO's. I have to say that this book is dissapointing on so many levels. There is nothing new in here that hasn't been covered in one of the many unofficial guides that dummies is shamefully trying to compete with. In fact the robots described come straight from the Constructopedia that LEGO gives away free in every Mindstorms box. Other than having a CD of some useful utilities don't bother. Everything on the CD you can get for free on the net. You should have no problem finding them. In fact if you don't know how to find LEGO related websites on your own you shouldn't be fooling around with robots in the first place. But I drift away from the intent of this review. Don't bother with this book. If you have a Mindstorms kit you have a computer. If you're reading this you're on the net. Spend the $20 on some more LEGO's or one of the unofficial books. You'll get more out of it.

This book was very disappointing. There is nothing new here. The RCX bots all come from the Constructopedia.

This book (2001 edition) is of no use if you are trying to learn how to program your RIS 2.0 The programing is for RIS 1.5 and earlier.

If you are reading it for information on LEGO basic construction techniques, my question would be "Why did you buy a Robotics Invention System set?" Save your money. I don't know what to recommend, but this is not it.

What can be said that hasn't already been said but what the heck does building a library of leg bricks have to do with NXT? This author is a hack himself, THIS BOOK HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH hacking with NXT, Do not waste a dollar!

I got this book along with NXT set as a gift, so I was very excited to learn about mindstorms a bit out of manual. The book turned out to be jumpy, full with unrelated photographs, trivial or non-helping 'hacks', unfinished projects, and cheese illustrations. At least half of the book is totally unrelated to NXT. Language in which the book is written is supposed to be funny dialogue, but is actually outright shallow. I would not recommend this book.

This book is the worst NXT book you could buy. It does not tell a thinkabout the NXT, inserts stupid jokes,completely off subject(what time is it when an elephant sits on your fence), and it just gives info on stuff we already know: it gives a piece list, tells you only how to use the basic blocks, tells you how to make an LDD model(?), and basicly was a waste of my time to read. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.

I bought this book (in person) not having heard about the infamous "all 1's" ratings on Amazon. A highly gifted Mindstorms building friend told me I'd managed to pick up the worst of all the books available for LEGO building.

I thought, "there must be SOME redeeming quality to this book," and indeed, the first few chapters seemed like a good read about the history and context of LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT building.

Only then I did I realize what a "hack" this book is. What a "hack" the author is. And what a waste of time and money the entire experience has been. The first few chapters that I read with such interest contain no new insight into the history of the Mindstorms concept or line, and in fact read like a half-hearted attempt at a high school term paper on the history of a toy the author may have experienced at a friend's house.

The hacks included are hardly worthy of the name, and the entire product feels like an attempt to continue the "rep" of a poser trying to maintain his "cool" as hacker extraordinaire. It doesn't read like the author knows much of anything about the subject-at-hand. It in fact opens with an insult thrown at a much better (and better received) book on programming the NXT.

If you're in the market for an NXT book, buy the one he attempts to insult. Buy ANY other book on NXT than this one, in fact.

Unfortunately, I purchased this book before the reviews came out. Very disappointing and actually suprising that somebody would publish a book like this. Perhaps the author got in over his head or just lost interest, although I dont think the NXT community should suffer from such an appalling book.

There is some useful information in this book, but getting it out is like cracking walnuts. The book is terribly written, maybe the 2nd worst book I've read. There are some gross typos, left out parts of sentences, wrong diagrams, multiple un- or poorly-defined terms and abbreviations. The writing style is dreadful. I find myself re-reading some paragraphs several times to figure out what he's saying. Other paragraphs could be skipped altogether as he relys too literally on the advice "tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them." That may be fine in an oral presentation. In writing it's redundant and annoying. Just tell me and tell me well. Skip the overture and encore. Nevertheless, I'm buying the companion prequel "Mindstorms Interfacing" because this book references that one a lot. Many of the web references are no longer active. Some of the free software referenced is no longer available online, but FORTUNATELY some is on the enclosed CD-ROM. A few nuggets of gold may be worth digging through tons of rock to find. I'm not sure yet whether this book will be worth the dig, I'm only 1/4 throught it.