As you can see I don't post here much, but OFP is something I hold near and dear so I'll chime in briefly before going back to lurking for another couple of years
For me, I tend to play with a small group of other players that I've met over the years. Â We only play co-op games, we only play on private server that one of us hosts and we have a habit of modifying the game to exactly what our small group wants. Â No other game out there gives us the freedom to do exactly what we want like OFP does. Â Even after all of these years when other games have come along with far superior graphics and sound.
I enjoy the missions that came with the game as well as the Red Hammer & Resistance missions but they are a small portion of what I enjoy in OFP, I'd even call them insignificant after all of this time. Â What keeps me playing the game and making missions for us is the atmosphere, nothing else. Â And by atmosphere I'm not referring to "Hollywood" atmosphere like you get in many games or fancy high-end shaders and multi-million dollar soundtracks, those just make me feel like I'm in a movie. Â The atmosphere in OFP is hard to describe and has little to do with graphics and sounds. Â Something about running through a forrest with the enemy chasing me and then getting myself lost and trying desperately to match up landmarks with my map so I could re-join my team isn't matched in any other game. Â No other game makes it possible to have a mission where your job is to simply ferry troops or supplies to the battlefield and your performance of that has a real impact on the battle. Â I can't express the satisfaction felt after playing a co-op game where I had to break off and run back to base in a recently "borrowed" civillian car to get more ammunition. Â Or the feeling of desperation when the team disperses into a nearby village or forrest simply trying to survive against overwhelming odds, and then trying to turn that around into a victory after re-grouping. Â This is the only game I've ever played that gave me the same feelings I experienced during maneuvers in Re-Forger or in the box at Hoenfels(did I spell that right?)/Graf.
All of this without having to listen to anybody complain about uneven teams or somebody cheating or exploiting some fault in the game.
I hope that doesn't make me an elitist. Â Although perhaps I am. Â I secretly (well not so much now) hope that the biggest players in the gaming industry will abandon the PC platform entirely and stick with consoles so we can get back to our roots when PC games were made by people with a passion for their games and a genuine interest in their community. Â Yeah, a utopian vission where a few small companies, not unlike BIS, aren't constantly under the gun from some guy in a suit who couldn't tell the different between an M1 Garand and an M1 Abrams.
As for ArmA, I'll be quite happy even if it is no more than OFP with a facelift, although after reading their press release I have a feeling it will be much better than that. Â Even moreso, I'm confident that the mod community will provide us with updates that even the developers can't imagine right now. Â In both cases I'm certain the atmosphere will be very good if not perfect.
