Colony and The Hobbit (fanfic) second film

Note: corrections to names and things in Colony welcome - I don't have my notebook and I'm doing this from memory.

I don't have many positive things to say about The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It was more fan-ficy (OK, I made up the word but you know what I mean) than the first one and not only added to the original book but changed things as well. I mean, Elves fighting Orcs in Laketown whilst Smaug is still alive? It's pretty and everything - but I wanted to see a film of The Hobbit and this isn't it.

Last weekend, chrestomancy re-ran his Colony game. This was, on the face of it, about us travelling to a planet and setting up a colony. However, there was much more going on.

• The character creation stuff was in two parts - stats and backstory. The backstory was based on the stats and this worked quite well. That said, ao_lai (also known as unit 103) got all the "going mad" stuff and I (aka Unit 101 and then, later, as Una) got all the double agent bits.
• The warp reminded me of Warhammer 40K and not in a good way. Actually, all of it reminded me of Warhammer 40K. The warp plant was just creepy and we didn't want to engage with it at all. Not least because it appeared to have sent all but one of the crew mad.
• Instead we escaped in the drop ship - with our thousand(?) fellow clones and one human and founded our colony. We cautiously made friends with the illegal AI on the planet. I and 103 went off to find out what had happened to the primer pod and discovered that the jump ship had become the Super Volcano (which explained why there was one) and we found the drop ship and its bits and pieces including the ant colony and the video of its last moments. Through the video we discovered it had also been attacked in the warp and this had driven many of the crew mad.
• We discovered we had to go back to the jump ship for more supplies. That sucked. We took weapons. We also took clones trained in security. All of whom were apparently called Bob (including the women).
• The jump ship was in an even worst state than we expected. The warp plant had created pod people. Yes, you get the idea. However, we killed said pod people and got some more supplies. Then we cleared out the rest of the plant so that the ship would be there if we needed it.
• Back on the planet, bateleur (aka Unit 102 and then, later, as Lewis) did Colony organisation, chrisvenus (aka Unit 104 and then, later, as Andrew) looked after food and I and 103 went off to find out what had happened to the Top Secret Military supplies. We found them, including the transmitter and the better weapons. We talked to the illegal AI and discovered there was a rail gun out in the asteroid belt that might be able to trace the strange transmissions we had spotted.
• We realised we needed to intercept ship number three which was bound to be warp-tainted as well. We also realised we needed to send message about the warp problems to stop anyone else from coming through. And the Railgun told us that large numbers of ships were going in and out of the system - probably a huge enemy fleet.
• We intercepted ship number three and saved the one sane person on board from warp plant and grabbed the drop ship of supplies. We then destroyed the jump ship. We transmitted messages back about the large enemy fleet from a point other than the surface of the planet.
• We sort of won. We kept all our colonists (except that pilot who had listened to the mad person tapes) and kept our colony safe.

I haven't written a computer game review in a while. This is because I haven't finished a new game in a while. I'm currently replaying Black Mirror in advance of playing the two sequels for the first time (it was almost exactly ten years ago when I played the first one). Also, bateleur and I are playing The Witness. In addition to those two, I'm playing Star Wars: The Old Republic which I started once before, but this time I have plans to reach the end (and write about it). Also, at some point I'll write a post comparing The Secret World with Star Wars: The Old Republic. And, of course, I'm still waiting for Blackenrock and Dreamfall Chapters: Book 5 to be released.