Recently  steel,  Rambo and  Thorin published what is likely to be the most comprehensive journalistic work on CounterStrike. Using Sun Tzu's "Art of War" as their starting point, the trio has composed the perfect playbook to the life as a CounterStrike-player. myMYM.com were given the chance to review the e-book, which is subject to heated discussions throughout the community. Is it the ultimate CounterStrike manual or is it just another way to pocket an easy earning?

Let me start out by underlining the comprehensiveness and complexity of this book. Consisting of a massive 205 pages, this electronic book contains everything from weapon handling over positioning and spray-through-spots on the most used maps, to sleeping patterns at major events. It is definitely not something you put together overnight.

Even though it could easily end up that way, the complexity of the book is not a drawback. Most chapters can be read without any introduction and while the book is build up around a chronological order of the content,  I haven't experienced any problems with hopping from chapter to chapter.

As for the language level of the book, it seems like the authors have mainly targeted an audience that have English as their native language. The book is still readable for non-native English speakers, even if some points are missed without the help of dictionary.

Simplistic, yet detailed

The book is starting out quite slow, using the first 15 pages to justify itself. Then, suddenly, the book takes off with the first of its only two major sections; “Individual”. The snap from informational text to educational content works surprisingly well, as it gives the reader a feeling of “Wow, this is important”.
The first part of the Individual section is all about weapons. In four very well written chapters, steel and Rambo leads the reader through 3 types of weapons; Pistols, Submachine Guns, Rifles and equipment. In each chapter, only the most interesting weapons has been chosen for review. Serving as a way to keep the book down to a readable length, the selectivity has the side-effect that you don't have to chose between relevant content and not so relevant content. They have simply kept focus on what you need to know and removed everything else here.

While they could have used a more scientific angle, e.g. describing the actual damage of each weapon when hitting each hitbox, Rambo and steel have chosen to focus on the players view. Therefore the weapon-chapters have a very simplistic feel. Approximate measurements of the damage in comparison to other weapons, and the description of the recoil, definitely isn't up to par with a scientific paper. But what the book has instead, is more valuable than any scientific paper on CounterStrike. It has the inputs from two of the best North American CounterStrike players. And in the Weapon-chapters it is obvious what they can contribute with.

Not only do they add valuable comments on how and where to use the weapons, they have also recorded videosamples to showcase the techniques they are describing. So instead of just writing it, and then let the reader figure the actual movement out on his own, they put in a video with audio-commentary.

The videos add a very detailed layer to the somewhat simplistic writings in these chapters. They provide some of the most valuabale educational content I have seen in terms of CounterStrike. In my oppinion, the videos alone is worth the price of the book.