General

• Fixed bugs for various stuck events and skill challenges.
• Fixed bugs for various map areas that allowed players to get outside of the playable space.
• Fixed a bug in dungeon speed-clearing code. Players should no longer experience reward reductions without triggering the speed-clearing debuff.
• Fixed a bug that was automatically killing players as they entered Sharkmaw Caverns in Lion’s Arch.
• Fixed an exploit in renown regions that allowed players to quickly complete them by interacting with objects while their inventory was full.
• Fixed a bug that caused charr characters to enter a state where any fall resulted in a long falling yell.
• Fixed a bug that caused older characters to have their monthly achievement reset upon completion before the current month ended.
• Fixed the conversion on all items that were changed from soulbound to account bound to actually be account bound now.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing certain music from playing.
• Fixed an issue with the loot table for undead grubs.
• Fixed a camera bug which occasionally caused the camera to get too close to the player’s backside.
• Updated the Barrel and Green Plant environmental weapons to disappear after lying on the ground for a set time. This will prevent map issues caused by hundreds of these bundles idling on the ground.
• Updated Rune of the Adventurer and Sigil of Energy to each grant 25% endurance when activated.
• Updated map completion rewards for Plains of Ashford and all World-versus-World maps to match the map level/content.
• Added an appropriate error message for players when trying to accept too many guild invites.
• Armor that is currently equipped can no longer be transmuted.
• Keg Brawl has received some updates:

• Lob: This skill is now ground-targeted.
• Throw: This skill now has the range of the old Lob but with a casting time.

• Master Weaponsmiths now sell their goods for coin instead of karma, as was originally intended.
• Miss Mipp at Almuten Mansion now sells Curry Buns instead of directly selling outdated buffs.
• Surfacing while downed underwater no longer grants invulnerability. This change was made to stop players from exploiting the surface of the water to maintain permanent invulnerability.
• The Trading Post will properly refresh when using item context menus from your inventory.
• Transmuted cultural armor now prevents opposing races from equipping it.
• Valkyrie armor boxes will now properly contain a coat instead of two helms when crafted.

Story

• Fixed bugs in the story step “Ships of the Line.”
• Fixed blocking bugs in the following story steps: “Forging the Pact,” “Killing Fields,” “Shell Shock,” “Short Fuse,” “The Battle of Fort Trinity,” “The Machine in Action,” and “Tower Down.”
• Updated difficulty of the following story steps: “Killing Fields,” “Lines of Communication,” “Minotaur Rampant,” “Mired Deep,” “Ships of the Line,” “The Battle of Fort Trinity,” “The Greater Good,” and “The Queen’s Justice.”

Events

• Fixed a bug that was periodically preventing the Claw of Jormag event from completing.
• Added catapults and scaling veterans to the bridge repair event in Kessex Hills.

Dungeons

Crucible of Eternity

• Reduced the difficulty of creatures and bosses, particularly health and armor.

Citadel of Flame

• Fixed exploits that were allowing players to speed clear paths of this dungeon.
• Reduced difficulty of the Searing Effigy.

Arah

• Fixed map exploit that was allowing players to speed-clear paths of this dungeon.
• Fixed a blocking bug in story mode.

Player versus Player

• Games will no longer autobalance after one team has reached 80% of the maximum score if the game ends by score.
• Games will no longer autobalance when within two minutes of the end of the game if the game ends by time.
• Autobalance functionality has been updated to give a new volunteer bonus to any players who volunteer for balancing, as well as giving any players balanced the winner bonus. When volunteers are lacking, random selection will be used. The text for this system has also been updated.

World versus World

• Updated the Red Portal Keep in the Eternal Battlegrounds to ensure the “no siege” debuff encompasses the entire start point.
• Fixed a bug with Keep Lords in World versus World where they could become immune to damage.

Professions

General

• Profession bundle weapons (engineer kits, elementalist conjure skills, warrior banners) can now save their autoattack status.
• The following profession skills now hit 3 targets instead of 1:

• Elementalist Dagger: Lightning Whip, Lightning Touch
• Mesmer Spear: Stab, Jab, Evasive Strike
• Ranger Spear: Stab, Jab, Evasive Strike, Dart, Counterstrike
• Thief Spear: Stab, Jab, Poison Tip Strike, Nine Tailed Strike
• Warrior Spear: Stab, Jab, Impale, Mariner’s Frenzy, Parry

Elementalist

• Flame Burst: This skill will no longer fire if the target is behind the player.
• Lightning Surge: This skill no longer has infinite range and cannot fire at targets behind the player. It also is properly affected by line of sight and works with the Arcana trait Blasting Staff.

Engineer

• Elixir X: This skill now gains a duration increase from both the Inventions trait Elite Supplies and the Alchemy trait Potent Elixirs.
• Freeze Grenade: This skill no longer benefits from the Explosives trait Grenadier for 5-second cooldown reduction.
• Knee Shot: This Firearms trait now affects all immobilize skills for engineers. The effect can only trigger once every 5 seconds to prevent players from exploiting it to stack massive amounts of cripple.
• Mortar: This skill is now properly affected by the Inventions trait Rifled Turret Barrels.
• Rifled Barrels: This Firearms trait now works with the Elixir Gun kit when underwater.

Guardian

• Bane Signet: This skill’s animation will now work properly when activated by greatsword and hammer users.
• Line of Warding: This skill now lasts for 5 seconds instead of 8 seconds.
• Merciful Intervention: This skill has been updated to heal when it completes and isn’t aborted.
• Renewed Focus: This skill now functions better while underwater (players are able to use abilities sooner) and functions with the Virtues trait Elite Focus. This skill now also properly refreshes Virtue of Courage when it is being affected by traits.
• Shield of Absorption: This skill will now appear correctly for all races.
• Wrathful Spirit: This Honor trait’s retaliation duration has been decreased from 10 seconds to 3 seconds.

Mesmer

• Updated all phantasms and clones available to the mesmer to ensure they activate within their range.
• Updated mantras to now function underwater as they do above water. They also no longer go on full recharge when interrupted.
• Illusionary Riposte: This skill now functions properly with the Dueling trait Blade Training.
• Phantasmal Warden: This skill no longer has a 0-second recharge when affected by traits. It now has approximately a 5-second recharge.

Necromancer

• Blood Is Power: This skill now grants 10 stacks of might but does not grant additional life force.
• Chill of Death: This Spite trait no longer slows down the player’s autoattack when activated.
• Epidemic: This skill no longer has infinite range.
• Haunt: This Shadow Fiend skill now triggers instantly.
• Last Gasp: This Soul Reaping trait will now apply protection and remove stun as if using Spectral Armor. It also now has the displayed 60-second recharge, and the duration has been reduced to 6 seconds to properly match the skill.
• Life Transfer: This skill will now work properly with the Soul Reaping trait Path of Midnight.
• Life Siphon: This skill now properly applies damage at its intended range of 600.
• Spectral Grasp: This skill now also grants 10% life force when used. It also benefits from the Curses trait Spectral Attunement to properly increase the chill duration to 6 seconds.
• Spectral Walk: This skill now stops granting life force when struck if the player activates Death Shroud, Plague, or Lich Form.
• Vampiric: This Blood Magic trait’s interaction with the Bloodthirst trait now increases health siphoning appropriately.

Ranger

• Entangle: This skill is now properly affected by the Wilderness Survival trait Wilderness Knowledge.
• Lick Wounds: This skill now functions only with ranger pets.

Mac Beta Client Update

• Fixed a bug that prevented players from entering the at sign (@) in the launcher’s log-in fields when using French Apple keyboards.
• Fixed a bug that prevented gem purchases.

General

• Fixes to LOD on numerous objects in the world.
• Fixes to maps to prevent players from moving outside of the playable area.
• Fixed a bug that made pet footsteps excessively loud, especially in water.
• Fixed a bug with assists not working in keg brawl.
• Fixed numerous blocked events.
• Updated text and functionality when purchasing bank slots.
• Fixed loud sounds on portals to the Underworld in Godslost Swamp.
• Fixed several bugs that were preventing some skill challenges from resetting properly.
• All recipe items are now account bound. Many were previously soulbound.
• Updated Superior Rune of the Ogre Rock Dog so that it doesn't summon when the player is underwater.
• Updated Sigil of Demon Summoning so that it doesn't summon when the player is underwater.
• Summoned rock dogs and fleshreavers die when they enter water.
• Removed the lone 1 copper from city map completion rewards.
• Removed Mystic Forge recipes that were being used to reduce surplus supplies.
• Enemies in tutorial areas will no long drop loot. Instead, an award of 72 copper has been added to the rewards for completing the tutorial. This is to dissuade players from lingering in tutorial instances to farm the creatures in them.
• Obsidian Shards are now account bound.
• Box of Berserker's Draconian Armor and Box of Rampager's Draconian Armor now reward the proper items.
• Fixed various crash bugs.
• Added the rank 30-39 wolf finishing move.
• Fixed recipes for the Mystic Artifact, Mystic Barricade, and Mystic Trident.
• Fixed visible map completion percentage errors and the achievement not completing.
• Applied 10-second cooldown to Bowl of Saffron-scented Poultry Soup buff. This was done to keep elementalists from spamming condition removal with Signet of Restoration.

Black Lion Trading Company

• Added functionality and improvements to the Black Lion Chests, including a chance to receive new items like a permanent version of the Black Lion Trader Express or a Mystic Forge Conduit.
• Black Lion Salvage Kits now properly display the correct percentages for rare materials.

Story

• Adjusted difficulty for the following story steps: "A Fragile Peace," "Breaking the Bone Ship," "Killing Fields," "Political Homicide," "Sabotage," "Set to Blow," "Stand By Your Krewe," "The Ringmaster," "The Stone Sheath," "Track the Seraph," "Unscheduled Delay," "Unwelcome Visitors," and "Welcome Home."
• Fixed bugs in the following story steps: "A Fragile Peace," "Against the Corruption," "Bad Blood," "Forging the Pact," "Stand By Your Krewe," and "Tower Down."
• Fixed exploits in "The Sound of Psi-Lance."
• End of Story Loot Bags:
  • These have been improved to only give green or better gear of level 78 or higher.
  • The number of bags received has been reduced from 5 to 3.
  • More improvements will be made in coming weeks. Players who complete the story before the final update will be equally compensated once the new rewards are in.

Dungeons

General

• Updated vendors in the Ascalonian Catacombs and Caudecus's Manor to sell level 80 versions of their unique skins rather than level 60 and 70. Players who purchased the level 60 and 70 versions will soon be given the opportunity to upgrade those to level 80 without having to use transmutation stones.

Citadel of Flame

• Fixed an exploit in Magg's chain that was allowing players to skip the entire dungeon and still be rewarded.
• In Magg's chain, if Magg happens to die in the lava field, he'll teleport himself to the start of the area just outside it.
• In Magg's chain, Magg must be much closer to things to draw their initial aggro. This only affects the escort to the magmacyte rock.

Caudecus's Manor

• Fixed an exploit that was allowing players to skip content.

Honor of the Waves

• Fixed a bug in the Butcher's chain that prevented a boss from spawning.

Arah

• Fixed a blocking issue.

Ascalonian Catacombs

• Fixed blocking bugs in Detha's chain.

Dungeon Rewards

We've made some significant updates to dungeon rewards. I wanted to try and clarify them here. All of these changes have been the result of an original exploit which was letting players receive upwards of 20 levels by completing a single dungeon run. We initially closed this exploit, which caused some new problems. The result is this new system which should increase dungeon rewards for players who play though them normally but help curb inflation of rewards for those who are using exploitative methods to farm them.

1. Dungeon tokens are now rewarded at the end of an explorable chain. This was done to stop players from repeatedly entering a chain and farming the first boss that dropped tokens rather than playing the entire chain. At some point in the near future, we will make up for this by making dungeon tokens a rare drop so that even players who are not completing a chain can make partial progress toward the rewards.
2. Dungeons reward 20 tokens for completion and now reward an additional 40 tokens for the first time they are completed each day. This means that if players can complete all 3 chains of a dungeon in a day, they'll receive a total of 180 tokens, which is enough to purchase some of the smaller rewards.
3. Dungeon tokens should be account bound. This will allow players to have a single character farm tokens for their other characters.

Professions

General

• Implemented a fix to make Heartseeker, Lightning Leap, Flame Leap, and Monarch's Leap hit more reliably.

Elementalist

• Fixed bugs with Flamestrike and Ice Shards so they can't be fired behind the player.
• Quick Glyphs

   Quick Glyphs: This Air Magic trait has been updated to apply 20% recharge reduction to the elite skill Glyph of Elementals.

Engineer

• 

   Grenade Barrage: This Grenade Kit skill should now be usable underwater.

• Short Fuse

   Short Fuse: This trait is no longer overwritten by the Grenadier trait. Also, this trait now works with underwater grenades.

• Speedy Kits

   Speedy Kits: Added a 5-second recharge to the trigger for this trait. This was to prevent players from exploiting it to gain vigor buffs of extreme duration.

• Invigorating Speed

   Invigorating Speed: Added a 5-second recharge to the trigger for this trait. This was to prevent players from exploiting it to gain vigor buffs of extreme duration.

Guardian

• 

   Merciful Intervention: This skill has been updated to work with the Meditation Mastery trait. The tooltip for this skill has also been updated to display the healing amount when affected by traits.

• Elusive Power

   Elusive Power: This trait has been updated to not grant might when aegis was blocked.

Mesmer

• Fixed text on "readied" mantra buffs.
• 

   Veil: This glamour skill has been updated to show the appropriate active duration when not affected by traits.

Necromancer

• 

   Taste of Death: This skill's healing fact has been updated.

• 

   Spectral Wall: This skill has been updated to apply the correct amount of vulnerability (10).

• Vampiric

   Vampiric: Fixed a bug with this trait so that it now functions with projectiles.

• Close to Death

   Close to Death: This trait has been updated to provide its listed 20% boost instead of the previous (unlisted) 10% boost.

• Banshee's Wail

   Banshee's Wail: This Curses trait has been updated to apply extra swiftness.

• 

   Spectral Walk: This skill has been updated to be more active and to work properly with its recharge trait. Also, Sever Spectral Bond has been changed to Spectral Recall.

• Minion Master

   Minion Master: This Death Magic trait has been updated to properly affect the elite skill Summon Flesh Golem.

• 

   Putrid Mark: This skill has been fixed to make it properly unblockable with the Greater Marks trait.

• Mark of Evasion

   Mark of Evasion: This trait can now trigger the Soul Marks trait.

• Reaper's Protection

   Reaper's Protection: This trait has been updated to properly work with a variety of crowd-control effects.

Thief

• Bountiful Theft

   Bountiful Theft: This strait[sic] has been fixed so that it doesn't apply 15 seconds of vigor twice.

Races

Norn

• 

   Call Wurm: Autocasting has been removed from this skill to prevent an exploit. Additionally, the skill may now be cast on the move.

Player versus Player

• Legacy of the Foefire

   Legacy of the Foefire: Fixed an exploit that was allowing players to teleport past one of the gates.

 World versus World

• Experimental Rifle

   Experimental Rifle: This item is no longer usable in World versus World.

A factory worker, Douglas Quaid, begins to suspect that he is a spy after visiting Rekall – a company that provides its clients with implanted fake memories of a life they would like to have led – goes wrong and he finds himself on the run.

Ok, I know I'm a couple of weeks late watching this, but yeah, I actually forgot about it, so sue me, I've been busy 😛

Anyway, I was having difficulty trying to decide how to do this review while I was walking back to the office from the cinema, do I a) review and compare to the 1990 Arnie film, or b) Review purely based on what I saw…   decisions, descisions…  

Ok, lets have a little from Column A and a little from Column B

Firstly, I was surprised by the rating for this movie, the 1990 version in the UK was given an 18 rating and still some parts of the film ended up on the cutting room floor…  the 2012 version had a 12A certificate (No one younger than 12 may see a ‘12A’ film in a cinema unless accompanied by an adult, and films classified ‘12A’ are not recommended for a child below 12.), which had me worried that it was dumbed down and going to be tame, but I was pleasantly surprised, especially by the few F Bombs liberally sprinkled through the film

Hell, the mutant hooker witht eh three boobs is in this film too and even more in your face on the screen with dem three boobs, "You're gonna wish you had a third hand!" (still a classic line)

The reboot treatment worked well for Total Recall, the tech in the film is believable (I really want a fridge with a touch screen on the front, makes perfect sense), and the smartphone built into your hand that becomes a video phone and smartphone when you place your hand on glass?!?   Feckin genius idea!

The one thing about this one that also made it more believeable, it stays on Earth, no MARS in this one, however its an Earth with only two population areas, The Colony's (Australia, New zealand, etc) and the United federation of Britain (BOOYAH! oh wait, they were the bad guys…  oh…  🙁 )  Anyway, the rest of the planet is a smoggy, radiation hazard zone after a chemical war ravaged the planet and only those two areas survived (Obviously Russia, America and Africa took pot shots at each other and lost…) and the two population zones are linked by an awesome super maglev through the gravity well at the center of the planet (Awesome use of an idea thats being generally considered in the scientific community)

Of course the United Federation of Britain is the high tech, cool place to live, with Android/synthetic police/army and cool maglev cars, while The Colony's is a giant ghetto for all the factory workers and lower class of society and this is where the story realy kicks off.  The leader of the UFB, Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston, (Malcolm int he Middle, Breaking Bad and some awesome films at the moment) has decided to send his new army of Synthetics through "The Fall" (the maglev through the planet) to remove the entire population, then bulldoze it all and build more population space for UFB citizens…   A generally dick thing to do huh?

Anyway, Colin Farrell plays Douglas Quaid this time and yeah, pretty much all the names of characters are EXACTLY the same as they were in the 1990 movie and he plays the character brilliantly and honestly more convincingly than Arnie did

Kate Beckinsale plays his "wife" Lori and Jessica Biel plays his resistance girlfriend, Melina…  But Kate Beckinsale plays this SO MUCH better than Sharon Stone in the original, BUT you can't quite get away from thinking she is playing her character from Underworld…  it's like Mila Jovovich doing anything but Resident Evil (which I'll be reviewing next week btw) now, apart from Lilu in Fifth Element, she is Alice, but hey, after 5 films, characters stick…  Thats not to say Beckinsale is bad, FAR from it, her character is a briliant actress too and a proper bitch, but so was Sharon stone int he original

Anyway, all the elements and ideas are here, apart from one, the alien storyline on Mars…  and to be honest, I was glad for that, this film is far more grounded, far more "realistic" in both the storyline AND setting, the tech is believable, especially as some of it is ALREADY being made (I need one of those fridges!!!)

The one downside, this film was great, but it lacked that fizz, I would definitely buy it on DvD/BR and watch it again and it definetly didn't dissapoint in the action department, far from it, but it didn't get me excited either

Completly deserves a solid 7 outta 10 though

Well worth a watch

~Lone