Altered Carbon

I read Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan, and liked it a lot. It’s a noir-ish SF novel set in a somewhat dystopian future where, thanks to the discovery of the relics of a technologically advanced alien civilization on Mars, humanity managed to spread over a number of distant worlds, and, more importantly, work out a technology of digital human storage which allows one’s mind and memories to be saved after the death of the body, and downloaded into another. Takeshi Kovacs is an ex spec-ops soldier who gets killed in the prologue and then ‘re-sleeved’ into a new body when hired by one of the most powerful people on Earth to solve a bizarre murder mystery. It’s through the challenges this tasks presents for him that we learn both about the setting and Tak’s not-exactly-amiable character.

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The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

I was thrilled when this game (hereafter TW2) appeared, yet it took me two years to finally play it from start to finish. And even after doing so, I can’t say for sure why it failed to lure me in the way its predecessor (hereafter TW), one of my all time favorites, did in 2008. A mystery by anyone’s standards, because TW2 has it all: the story, the visuals, the combat, the humor. It’s rare that I have so few (next to no) objections to a game. Yet if I was to choose one to replay, I’d still rather go to TW than to TW2.

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