Rating:
(26 reviews)
Author: Visit Amazon's Luke Cuddy Page
ISBN : 0812696549
New from $16.94
Format: PDF
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Review
If you're a Zelda theorist, chances are you already have this book or plan to run out and buy it. If you're just dipping your feet into Zelda at a higher level of thought, The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy offers a great starting point with interesting insights into both Zelda and gaming as a whole.... A true Zelda fan shouldn't be without it. - ZeldaUniverse.net, March 27, 2009
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- Series: Popular Culture and Philosophy (Book 36)
- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Open Court (November 25, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0812696549
- ISBN-13: 978-0812696547
- Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 6.1 x 9.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Free Download The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy: I Link Therefore I Am
This 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.
Seeing as how I like to read in my spare time, I thought I'd post some short reviews of the books I complete.
Just last night I finally got around to finishing Luke Cuddy's The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy. This was my first foray into the "Popular Culture and Philosophy" series, which also includes the likes of The Simpsons, Star Trek, Star Wars, Buffy, House, and plenty others.
The general format of these books are sections organized by topic. The authors explore basic ideas such as the general mythology, timeline, and free will, while tackling some more complex ones including the link between reality and Hyrule, Zelda's feminism, and the existence of God & evil. Within each section are chapters, each consisting of an essay published by a professor at an American university (so you can presume they're not just BSing you). The essays themselves are well-organized, and the content of certain ones were more appealing than others.
In general, the concepts were accessible and well-explained. Yes, there were ideas that seemed a bit far-fetched, as if the authors were looking too much into it, but that's to be expected when you philosophize about playing video games. However, as a whole it does make a valid case about the presence and prevalence of role-playing games in modern society, and I did get something out of it.
In terms of representation of the series, I'd say most of them were addressed, especially in the chapter that focuses on the timeline. I'm not sure I agree with focusing on The Wind Waker so much in the opening chapter was the right decision, since the author made it seem like the quintessential Zelda game (when A Link to the Past and The Ocarina of Time have set more of a precedent and are more widely known).