Well, a lot of people are kinda confused about ArmA and OFP i've noticed.
So, i thought i'd write a little bit about what i like about both of them, and wich does what better. Hope it's of any help.
What i think about:
Armed Assault:
+ free-aiming ironsights (meaning the ironsights are not glued to the middle of your screen, but can float around without your Field of View (FOV) changing.
+ Improved controls for CQC (close quarters combat)
+ Supersonic bulletcracks
+ Join-in multiplayer
- Short, uninteresting campaign (short in the way it could probably fit 1,5x in the original OFP's campaign alone) without any characters about wich you know or care.
- The way the game handles 'altered missions'... Meaning the sidemissions wich make your life easier in the main mission on that situation-map. Here they are offered as 'sidequests', in OFP missions could change while playing, with different consequences for the rest of the campaign in story.
- Lack of any feeling for the game.
- Again, personal taste i guess, but i feel there are not enough missions based on soldiers. There is a large focus on vehicular combat, while in OFP there is a larger focus on infantry, with the occasional tank or helicopter mission etc.
Operation Flashpoint
+ Lengthy campaign, with a focus on soldiers, and not just the basic 'flow' of the war like ArmA. ArmA just tells you 'city 1 has fallen, so defense shifts to city2', while OFP gave you a soldier's insight on what happened, with a more personal note. The story is more about surviving in war, then just the outcome and the war itself.
Also, with both addons (Red Hammer and Resistance) you get another 2 huge campaigns.
+ Personality. This might be personal taste, but the SLA in ArmA lacked personality. I liked the soviets better, they came across better.
+ AI: AI takes cover better then in ArmA, in wich soldiers keep standing a lot of the times they are being shot at. In OFP, they allways go prone. Individual AI is pretty ****ty in both games, but 'overall AI' does do brilliant things at times. (for example: commander gets order to pull back, but this is just a simple waypoint to him. Point A leads to point B, along a straight road. Just a simple line for him to follow... Untill he spots enemy tanks on his six, at 500 metres. At wich point he decides to run into the forest (for wich he has NO waypoint at all!) because tanks cant reach him there! In ArmA i've never seen such a thing happen.
+ Bigger mod-community, still going. I could fill my 380 harddisk with all the mods for OFP and still not have them all! There are a lot of custom campaigns and missions, both for singleplayer and multiplayer. (thinks of Finnish Defence Forces mod, and FFUR etc)
- This is really the biggest flaw of OFP (and i regret saying this as i'm an hardcore OFP fan, but i just have to say it for this to be all honest). You cant join a playing session. As soon as a mission starts, people can get into the server, but you cant spawn any more and you have to wait till the mission is either failed or finished. And because some missions can take up a couple of hours, this isnt really a thing you want to wait for.
- The huge amount of mods is good, but also bad as you wont have everything. Certain servers however do run these mods, so you cant join them if you dont have the mod. Together with the unability to join in on allready playing servers, you might give up on even trying to go online (as i did, ive never played OFP multiplayer, only singleplayer. But i never minded really, as i didnt like MP much at the time, and i have had hundreds of hours of fun in the campaigns and editor)
So, in all i guess i can say, that gameplay wise, ArmA has added some nice features (like improved controls for CQC), while the gameplay is still the same as OFP's.
So, generally speaking gameplay-wise ArmA is not adding anything except a few nice new features to enhance gameplay.
In any other way (feeling, story etc) OFP is superior. As gameplay is the same, but ArmA fails on the things OFP succeeds in.
So basically, if you dont know if your pc can handle Armed Assault, and havent got the original Operation Flashpoint and addons, i suggest you get them now for this pc instead of upgrading solely for ArmA, as the gameplay is the same except for said amount of features (wich isnt really a lot, hence most people's disappointment with ArmA) but everything else is done better in OFP.
Hope this is informative for you guys
