Where is everybody on this website? All my unions have slowed down and popular games don't even have beyond 80 or so forum posts. What is going on? Did everyone leave GS? 

My internet connection to my xbox is bugged and is being repair meaning I will be offline despite all the fun events planned. But I believe in all the event "goers".

Typically I stay away from renting games since I don't end up buying them then people think I own them when they see them in my recent then get rejected play invite. But this Chrismas someone gave me a gamefly gift rental and I just used it for all the games that I was intrested in but thought they were too much money for such short length. I will be playing many games and releasing many reviews that are from a quickplay prospective.

Recently many things go at a disapointing turn out within the United States. Firstly the missed opportunity in the 2011 Women's world cup today the United States while outplaying Japan and making an amazing underdog run at the Cup they lost in a shootout. Why is this disappointing both the men's national team losing to Mexico in the Final Gold Cup this year and this loss have one thing in common ... missed finishers for goals despite better play. This is upsetting to the American public and leads me to how I shall slay this. Personally I rank in as #1 currently in freestyle weapons for martial arts in the world, I have refused the olympic team offer once before for the 2008 games I may enter for the Men team in Saber for 2012 London, because the US needs an unexpected win with such disappointing outcomes as of late.

Today's second issue with failure must die is as a chicago citizen my favorite radio station Q101 announced they will be going off air July 14th, 2011 after 19 years of Alternative music. They we're responsible for the growth of many promising young musicians exposing them to a broader lister bases... The music was of all sorts from their beginnings of Kayne West to Rise Against they birthed and grew many Chicago's unheard talent before they we're big from all backgrounds and genres as well as announced all sorts of musical events. Basically they grew my knowledge of music tremendously and likely the same for many chi-city peoples. This loss to the arts community of Chicago hurts and personally I and other IAM members have choosen to add an online format for local musicians to test their music on a population. Nothing is in stone but whatever we can do we will.

In all honesty I was never really a big fan of competitvely playing any RTS (real time strategy game). I mostly stuck with enjoying it as creating or macroing a large elite force. Playing more laid back especially considering the RTS games I had experienced before were Age of Mythology, Age of Empires 2 & 3, Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth 1&2,Warcraft 3, Dawn of War (2 I am not sure), and Medieval Total War 2. Now yes I played starcraft: broodwar and many others but never for more than a few games. Its only until I played Starcraft 2 due to a friends convincing that I really understood why the series is the best selling and most beloved of the genre. The other series/games I had played were primarely micro based. Now you may argue AoM, AoE (look at game titles), and WC3, etc had important key macro requirements like limited resources (not in all cases) which requires a conclusion of a fight and map control however while I love these other games but they were not as mathematically complex or require such fine tunning as to timings as Starcraft 2. This is not disbaring the remarkable systems of each of these games but none of them have the constant evolvement (likely due to fan basis) and variables that starcraft does.

Starcraft as a game appears as any other a game with counters units, mathematically sound economics, and good graphics. But it takes it to a common secondary level of play (more common now) a game that has maps requiring different strategy base on the design of the map and different landscape exploits for the player and constant scrutiny of the balance between each race (balance) (regardless of positive or negative). This is only covering gameplay mechanics too if you haven't caught on though the campaign was excellant. This next or tertarary level of gameplay is where Starcraft takes off... while WC3 and posiible others (can't remember) had significant, definining it as not manners in which you have advantages in certain aspects of play but fundementalin play depending on which races and general play and timing in what you do due to the multipler of attacks, attack speed, movement speed, method of attack, range, and placement are important in every battle.. this creates unit synergy indirectly and due to the low health base and speed at which the game is played a higher aspect on all categories making Starcraft unqiue just slightly to all competition.

Now as for my thoughts formed with my old teamates/friends influence: I believe the game is only ever been since the first 2 patches slightly imbalanced and much imbalance is exageratted... its only highlighted by the complexity of the game if the game was slower we'd see patches from now many years later like in WC3 they released a patch this year 2011 many years after its release. The balance complants were more to the uselessness of certain units during multiple race match-ups and understanding other races general mechanic advantages. These advantages I have hypothesized to be for my main Terran:

The ability to "contain" an enemyin the mid to late game... this is due to the power of terran support units the fact they can heal the fastest given repair or medicvac, exception is roaches or morphing a unit.Additionally their units are all ranged allowing for obviously with different ranges thus best quick damage to enemies within the multitude of terran unit ranges in particular the best light unit ranged light unit destroyers. That existing that they simply are the best light unit destroyers without "spells" means terran can also be the most potent raiders since terran units aren't very limited in options of covert missions (drops) and are explosively powerful with stim and other abilities hitting quickly with some of the highest dps. And now you maybe thinking see terran are overpowered because they have excellant damage and ability to withstand a beating with support. But here is where people who understand terran excell in playing as or defeating terran. Terran are the least mobile race the total speed of the terran army without stim and thank you blizzard for making movable Battlecruisers is lesser than any otherrace's army meaning terran are very dependent on setting up a foward command or contain when attacking the reason being terrans don't have the highest armored (defense) and hearty units and the more spread out they are the more useless in combat they become. Earlier I stated terran have the strongest support which makes the strongest denfense however this is only as good as the defenses ability to cover an enagement. Thus terrans who are countlessly harassed by raids often end up spread too thin during a major enagement. This exposes the second and third weakness of terran (major weakness only will be covered) terran have the slowest production and deployment unlike zerg we don't automatically get the ability to produce 5-6or 2-3 or whatever larva surplus is hadwith a 650 mineral investment plus whatever tech structure meaning losing entire forces is pretty much complete loss and protoss can warp in a little less than half of all their availible units at any pylon source proxy or base side thus instant deployment. Terran's production is given a plus in the same sense though... due to add-ons terran can mass produce light units that serve various purposes from anti-light air, anti-light units, anti-heavy air,or support biological but generally considered the all-purpose infantry of a training facility or higher tech or reseached units to exploit enemyweakness in a specific catagory within seconds of lifting facilities after a tech lab or reactor has been completedallowing the quickest tech changes to your opponents knowledge. Now on to more difficulties with terran macro while the mule allows terran to mine at greater efficiency than all other resources it also depletes a secure supply of minerals quicker, itcausesless terran scoutingandwindowsexploitationfor clocked units needing detectionsince terran have the most expensive and highest tech for mobile detectors. At the same time it points out a flaw in terran's ability to contend continuously with enemies. What do I mean? Terran need mules as we all know since the macro tools are less spefic and not automatically availible. Any equal based building of workers leaves the terran in a starting deficit the reason being we can't speed up production as protoss (dependent I guess) nor just have more starting worker production ability as zerg. Plus workers for terran have to be delayed in mining for build time unlike protoss and while zerg must sacrifice a drone their ability to replenish it far exceeds that of any other race. Terran thus are dependent and its statisitically noted need mules for early game mineral income equality and are most devastated by the loss and reproduction of workers in time of replenishinig them. Now the versititilty or the macro abilties for terran is least afterwards scan is only for viewing an area/ detection, mules are really just limited time super svcs without gas mining or building, and supply drop well just drops supply whereas chrono boost .... Later Finsih anothertime

Well that was intresting... being gone for a month (plus?). But fear not I have returned. Yes with more reviews, better self-health, more personality, updates on when the new IAM center will be up, and reviews.

Now that thats out of the way I will be posting this week supplimentry blogs for those who care on Gamespot about topics me and other IAM members have discussed during my time off. These Include: Complete thoughts on the design and my finding of Starcraft 2, Quality of entertainment products decline and what I consider quality in today's market, and lastly decision(?) of what will be the next IAM generation one FPS that well community play since Generation 2 of gamers have arrived.

Yes, yes, and maybe n_n. To answer the rumors... did you break the striking speed record Jim Fungs record was smashed at 503 punches in a minute by me. Yes, I collapsed and have severe muscle exhaustion and typing hurts alot. And maybe I finished conducing the nerve modulation on myself though the details of my exact study are considered secondary and non-essential to the primary research project... by design maybe?

Not that I forgot to inform but rather didn't bother due to lack of people aware of this portal/user being IAM_Apollos, that the IAM center is having an issue an must be recreated. That issue being that it supported watchable and downloadable material that was in violation with international copyright laws. Instead of a warning the site was simply seized. Yes... I personally was aware of the potential risk of the material but never realized our little site would receive any investigation. Fear not we will recreate when our busy members have time... sorry for the inconvience in finding manga, free games, anime, movies, music, and shows and/or their links but we really didn't have much choice.

Fortunately with the recreation this gives us time to build a community base for what to include or rid our selves of other aspects. We already decided to eliminate of individual Founder channels mostly due to the neglect of certain founders as well as poor organization. And the general introduction to the channel MV (thing) will continue to be skippable and now include all members however our editing is poor and its currently 15 mins long and features some members like me, riku, brad, sop, and kia having to much... Due to our ability outside the world of gaming. Also a new generation of competitive team will be announced soon for Halo and possibly SC2 (issue with sponsoring). These members are young and highly skilled, trained/coached by originals, and honestly likely to disrupt the MLG as much as we once did ... hopefully for longer than we did =). They may not be completely formed into a team for a year however. Don't worry this doesn't mean the originals and our friends will disappear but it does mean you will see less of us due to well... Responsibilities of our age group. (imagine what you will)

And finally the Castle rumor is true... Yes me and many of my roommates are building a castle designed by me, nene, and kia. Yes literally a castle funded by our group successes... We have no final list as to among us which people our investing besides the designers or perminite plan as to what will happen down the road.

EDIT

The demo misleads many onlookers of the project of what was announced as basic game mechanics. Looking at the negatives since this is disappointing. We were told the game was more based on decisions yet there were really none in the demo. Secondly there appear to be no new skills. The gameplay is significantly more fast pace to an bittersweet effect... while this makes the game visually more attractive it gives the player way less time to react compared to Dragon Age Origins, making the controls much more difficult... I mean I played through Origins on nightmare and this regular difficulty seemed rather elevated from regular. The graphics are terribely uneven to the gameplay mechanics/ physics. And finally the storyline didn't draw me in at all... so let me get this straight it starts during the blight but we're even weaker than in dragon age origins and we're a champion? Because the last Warden is not involved? Or what ? And My brother who's a cowardly prick dies early... ok? I mean while these characters could seem accurate there is no attachment at all really... they are rather simple.

Positives now... finally battles seem larger, the spells and abilities are more obvious and physics are appealing. The character design seems more extensive. But thats really it. =(. I don't mean to be a downer lately but this isn't appealing to my $5 dollar pre-order.

I as one of the original IAM members have not been as loyal to the friends and associates by not producing any real material for nearly 3 months. Now I will personally release 7 movie reviews, 11 cds reviews, 8 game reviews, 5 show reviews, and 20 anime reviews, yes 20. (i've been saving) Along with the IAM starcraft 2 OP pack and trick guides to console games. Only 1 martial arts video. Sorry for the delay its just classes picked up, communication broke down between main members, and I've been enjoying my SEA semester.

On the other technical problem with the IAM center... Sorry about the sponsor redirect issue we've corrected that and ask that no one sends anymore hate emails to our sponsors. As it was not their fault it was our lack of familiarity with the new mechanics would cause and endless loop of advertisements. In no way, shape, or form am I trying not to upset our sponsoring corporations to mutually benefit both ourselves and the excellent services and products. Just kidding... Its been resolved now and as a special limited a time offer to regain the trust of all our fans we'll be offering a dates to all our female fans... on second thought that is the same as committing seppuku or admitting to to a misdemeanor of sexual harassment, knowing the guys. So we'll extend the "together time" to a full 3 days this next week of at least 4 members being on at least once a month until someone is stupid enough to tie a knot. (see site for details)

Your patience was and forever will be appreciated since it allows us to keep a large public format for that which we love.