YMMV / Halo: The Flood

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Marvin Mobuto. He's a posthumous character that was Guilty Sparks' first attempt to get a Reclaimer through the Library, but he failed and died. What makes him so remarkable was that he got quite a ways into the Library, despite being a Badass Normal with no power suit, special training, or SPARTAN-II upgrades. H's stuck with fans, and more than one fan story has referenced his feats.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Zuka's attitudes of doing what it takes to win, disobeying orders to accomplish goals, and musing that being a Proud Warrior Race Guy is less than what his race can become sound really strange to those who know about what the Sangheli would evolve into... except that the 10th anniversary edition of Halo 2 had cut scenes that specifically show that Sangheli would occasionally produce powerful warriors that would defy the status quo and question things, and that these warriors would be made into Arbiters to make sure the rest of the race stays in line. Zuka accidentally pre-dated a real plot point!
• Memetic Loser: Zuka 'Zamamee is the butt of a lot of jokes among Halo fans, mostly for his repeated failure to assassinate the Chief and for ultimately being killed in a combat encounter that most Combat Evolved players would've completed in a few seconds using a Rocket Launcher.
• Misblamed: Dietz is given a lot of stick for writing what most consider to be one of the weaker Halo novels. One of the major complaints is that a majority of the book is just a rather dry retread of the game; however, Dietz had little choice over this matter and the far-better received subplots about the Marines and Covenant were only added at his insistence. He also had a mere ten weeks to write the whole thing. Granted, most of the subplots aren't particularly great either, but it's very easy to manage another author getting their hands on it and crapping out a boring prose version of the game. It's certainly nothing like the Mass Effect: Deception fiasco.
• One-Scene Wonder: Sgt. Marvin Mobuto appears only briefly (and is already dead when he does), but just him being a normal Marine who managed to fight his way through most of the Flood-infected Library was enough to make him one of the book's more memorable characters.
• So OK, It's Average: This has remained the general consensus from the very day the book was released; while few Halo fans regard it as bad enough to be considered as one of the worst video game tie-in novels of all time, it is widely considered to be the worst of the Halo novels released during the original Bungie trilogy's run, to the point where it is the only early Halo book that is not universally regarded as a foundational text of Halo's expanded universe. Even attempts to reassess The Flood's reputation have been somewhat stymied by the fact that Dietz would go on to write what is generally considered one of the worst video game tie-in novels of all time.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The general consensus is that this book introduces some good ideas to the Halo canon (this book was our fist look at Lekgolo society, as well as the first to look at the Human-Covenant War from the perspective of both the Covenant and the fan-favourite ODST's), but it also has to deal with the distraction of being a rote retelling of Combat Evolved. A very commonly cited 'fix' for this book is to cut out the Combat Evolved parts and treat it more as an anthology of various stories during the Battle of Installation 04.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: It's hard to get invested in ODST's story when you know they're Doomed by Canon whatever happens.

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