The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy: I Link Therefore I Am (Popular Culture and Philosophy) Review

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The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy: I Link Therefore I Am (Popular Culture and Philosophy) ReviewThis book is lame and embarrassing. It's a collection of banal undergraduate-quality essays that shoehorns entry-level philosophy into the Legend of Zelda universe, often with no justification. Worse, many of the essays take concepts of video games in general and make their points, using only the Legend of Zelda as a tangential example, which makes them irrelevant in this book, i.e. a whole essay devoted to basic logical fallacies (ch. 3). Gee thanks for that. I didn't know what a slippery slope was and decided to consult this very book in order to learn about it.
The typographical errors that saturate this book are just appalling, and deserve no further remark. Well, some are hilarious though, like "Zeldac universe" (p. 76).
I'm paging through this looking for egregious examples of what makes this book such a disappointment; there are so many. Here's the opening to one of the essays: "I have a confession to make. I don't finish what I start. Specifically, the Zelda games I start" (p. 45). I'm sorry? What then exactly makes you qualified to write about them?!
There's a section on the "controversial" chronology of the Zelda games that I found particularly ridiculous. Sorry, I did not pay to read some 13-year-old's half-baked theory lifted straight from a random online forum, every mangled word faithfully replicated.
There's a lot to complain about here, but ultimately there's no real need even to consider this forgettable volume. All I wanted in this book was a collection of essays written by die hard Zelda fans first, philosophy enthusiasts second. There's more than enough compelling material in the games themselves to warrant valid philosophical topics; forcing inapplicable Western philosophy into this universe just comes across as pretentious and frustrating. The writers simply do not appear to have a transcendent passion for The Legend of Zelda any more than they do for video games in general, which begs the question: why were they chosen to contribute to this volume? To be fair, there are a few grains of ideas here that are fascinating, but ask yourself this question: is it worth opening your wallet to read in a book what you can find for free in the 'essay' section of any Zelda fansite?The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy: I Link Therefore I Am (Popular Culture and Philosophy) Overview

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Game Coding Complete, Third Edition Review

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Game Coding Complete, Third Edition ReviewThe title of this book suggests two things to me. The first is that it provides a complete guide to game coding. The second is that it fills the same role for game programming that the book Code Complete fills for programming in general, i.e. a journeyman's book that fills in the gaps left in introductory texts and broadens your knowledge to prepare you to move on to more advanced topics. Unfortunately by trying to do the former (which I don't think is possible in a single book), it falls a bit short on the latter, resulting in a (very) good book rather than the great book it could have been given the author's impressive background.
First, the bad.
It seems that the author never really decided what his audience is. Parts of the book (e.g. the introduction to 3D graphics) are written for total beginners, while others (such as the overview of game engines - all of which cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to license) are really only relevant to experienced professionals. The author/publisher really should have picked an audience and stuck with it.
Some readers will be annoyed by how platform-specific this book is, which really isn't apparent from the cover copy or even the other reviews. All of the code samples use DirectX, and there is a lot of space dedicated to Windows-specific information. Granted, Windows and DirectX are by far the most popular choices for PC-based game development, so this won't be an issue for most readers.
And now for the good.
The best parts of this book were those covering topics that typically get overlooked in other game programming books, namely things like pointers and memory management, scripting, creating automated build enviroments and code/resource management, debugging, and notably the entire section on production, scheduling and testing. Although some of these topics are covered in other books that are not specific to game development, putting them in a single volume and exposing game developers to them early on is a Good Thing.
Although the sample code was fairly sparse, what he did provide was extremely useful, in particular the resource file implementation, random number generator, and scene graph.
Finally, props to the author for maintaining a website and actively supporting this book. As an author myself, I know how much work is involved in doing so, and I recognize that it reflects the author's desire to really help people and not just sell books.
In conclusion, my overall impression of this book was very positive. It's marred by a few shortcomings, but overall, I think that most new game programmers will benefit from it.Game Coding Complete, Third Edition Overview

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