Why bother with IRC when we could use Starcraft?

Is it worth completing the single player Starcarft before buying this?

Yes I have no intention of joining the online battles. I am simply not good enough. There are enough missions to practice on. You can even have a free for all and set everyone against everyone else. I have just had three hours playing as the Protoss trying out different strategies on a number of maps. Sending Archons in to obliterate 7 zerg colonies is great. It is a great game.

I meant the single player story line from the original Starcraft, I've ordered Starcraft 2 anyway, it's on the way just wondered whether it would add anything to know what happened with the characters and such.

I would not know about that aspect. I just play it as a game. I might try the campaigns at some point. That follows a storyline.

Woo I've downloaded the first game, it's taking me back, bit frustrating only being able to select 12 units at a time, is that still the case in the new one?

Sorry for me it is like starting an new game. I cant remember much about the old game apart from it was good, oh and it was on a mac.

So Starcraft 2 is the best multiplayer strategy game I've ever played, well balanced for th emost part, zerg seem a little underpowered but nothing that isn't tweakable. Fantastic recommended to any fans of the genre (with a decent broadband setup). If anyone wants to add me as a friend my email is leeds underscore manc at hotmail dot com and my in game name is Kohaku, would be up for a few quick one on ones becasue i need to practise :p

I am crap at the game and am saving the scenarios for later. I am playing against the AI. I like the protoss as a faction to play, very good en masse but you have a slow start so need to be very quick to build up a decent set of defences at the start while you get your forces together.

If you want to get better watch some replays by the pros and just sit in their base and see what order they build their first few buildings in, how many SCVs they use etc. Then play against a Very Easy AI and practice your own builds, see how quick you can get your army out, keep improving the skill level of the AI until you're pretty much churning out an army witht he best of 'em. Then do the Challenge missions that give you some scenarios to improve your tactics, the important ones are basic strategy, which units are good against which other units, and "Opening Gambit" which will tell you how solid your initial build order is and how efficiently you're mining resources.

It's about this time you can start your multiplayer placement games, which will put you against random other players and depending on how well you perform, you'll be ranked and put in a league of similarly skilled players, from then it's just a case of playing 1v1s until you win more than you lose, et voila, you're a good player, should take a couple of weeks.

But yeah, the replays really really help, you get to learn multiplayer tactics without any of the fear of getting completely mauled.

I tried the novice scenarios. I was doing novice desert oasis. It was 30 minutes before I built any military units at all. I did do a wonderful line of photon cannons so that anything that attacked me were obliterated before they reached the protective rockfall. I had a single loss at the easy level. I could have avoided that if I waited till I had a few archons, to drop in as well.

Just browsed Amazon, wtflip! when did Civ 5 come out? I wonder if it's aweomse.... erm, i'll just ignore its existence otherwise i won't be able to do anything else apart from sit next to my PC.

Civ 5 is out very soon. Either this month or next. It has been available for pre-order since June. The game play is different, archers can now shoot over adjacent hexes, though considering a city hex now is the same size it would be like an archer shooting right over the city. The hex map might be more realistic of actual distances, particularly diagonals.

As a mac user I will wait for it to be ported across to OSX.

Worrying. That doesn't sound like a Civ thing for archers to fire into ajacent squares, you're talking about a tenth of a continent, seems silly, it's like a chess game, the actual real-life physics of the weapons is almost irrelevant.

Though the civ thing is to have archers take out modern armour!!! or pikemen to "shoot down" a stealth bomber!!