I suck at StarCraft

It took me an hour and a half the other night to beat one of the missions of the Terran campaign. I'm only on the 6th or 7th one, but the game is still pretty tough. I'm starting to learn the hotkeys for stuff, and that's helping some, but I am still a total noob.

I'm on this mission now where I have to send some guys to rescue some other guys who are surrounded by a freakin' ton of Zerg. I can't seem to win anytime I throw my guys at the Zerg encampments along the way to where I need to go. I don't think I'm taking enough guys or something. I'll typically send 8 or so marines and/or firebats along with 2 to 4 each of the vultures and wraiths. Looks like I need to amass a larger force before sending them out to kill a bunch of Zergs and Zerg buildings.

I popped in Oblivion the other night, for the first time in forever. I've decided to try and at least get through the main quest of the game, and then maybe later go and do all the guilds and factions and stuff. I still can't see myself burning through enough of the game to necessitate buying Shivering Isles, the expansion pack. During this session, I did a couple of legs of the main campaign, and picked up a couple more pieces of the Daedric armor set, which I think is best in the game, though I could be mistaken. I'm beginning to agree with what seems to be the popular consensus--that this game is broken. Specifically, the bit about monsters leveling up just as you do. I saw a sage bit of advice online, though, which for the most part fixes the problems this causes: set the difficulty slider all the way down.

Also, I've been playing a lot more of Crisis Core: FFVII at home and on my commute. Good game, though in places I've thought the encounter rate was too high. I'm just at the part where Zack has met Cloud for the first time. The narrative so far is better than I'd thought it would be, but that's not really saying a lot. My favorite character is probably Angeal, followed by Zack himself, and then Sephiroth, who seems surprisingly more normal and level-headed here than he becomes in FFVII proper.