Playing a Book, Reading a Game

This actually happened back in the summer, but I really didn’t have a good place to talk about it then so I’m writing about it now.

Sometimes, two pieces of media just go together incredibly well. When I was on staycation this summer I started reading Amped by Daniel H. Wilson and playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution at the same time. Both of these stories focus on what happens when human beings start becoming “augmented.” Augmentation in this context is used to mean when we use technology to make us better at whatever. Students with ADHD can sit still and focus, construction workers can be more precise. Of course, as we would expect, not everyone goes along with the idea of altering humans in this way.

In both these stories there is a struggle between those who accept the augmentation, and those who do not.  The story is told through two completely different sets of eyes though. In Amped your hearing the story from an augmented student and in Deus Ex you’re hearing the story from the point of view of an augmented cop.

While I haven’t finished Deus Ex yet (derby season started, and then the busy “get everything coded before the holidays” season started at work) I found playing it while reading Amped made the overall experience more engaging and the story seem more multi-dimensional.
Have you ever found a game/movie/book combination that complimented each other really well?