Best gaming memories. Ever.
I was so sick of Doom, Quake, Unreal, etc. I'm just not twitchy enough to compete online in those games, and I never really got the hang of scarfing the rocket launcher and camping it. This was an absolute breath of fresh (smokey, dusty) air. The first time I co-op'ed with a buddy and accidentally shot him in the ass because he was prone in a stand of trees and we hadn't properly communicated our locations, I was hooked. He limped out the rest of that mission as spotter and I got slaughtered trying to rescue the POWs.
The graphics weren't exactly cutting edge, but then again, they kinda were. The pallette was a little bland, but it has a day/night cycle! I could take over any vehicle I wanted, even aircraft! So many revelations of what a game could be in Flashpoint. I finished the campaign, and played so many hours of co-op I was wondering how I was still employed. Then someone came up with the wicked CTF mod. Tooo great. The community for that game was astounding.
I bought the gold edition a year or 2 later because it had OFP, Red Hammer and Resistance all in one pack, we played the hell out Resistance, too! I just realized I'd never actually done the single player campaign in RH so I'm doing that now, postponing my grinding for rank in BF2 for this beloved classic.
I'd highly recommend buying this one if you enjoy tactical war games, it still offers alot to the casual and even not-so-casual gamer, though the graphics in the original campaigns are a little dated. For some reason Resistance seemed better... I rated the difficulty as Hard, only because it takes awhile to master it, even if you've played other tactical games like Rainbow 6, etc. The game can be very unforgiving to the newcomer until you get used to the idea of hiding from bullets!!!
I marked it down for graphics only because of the current state of gaming, BF2 is far prettier, but the depth of gameplay just isn't there. Sound is pretty great, though I occasionally get some static in vehicles that clears if I switch to outside view and back.
EDIT: Thought I should add that there are some fantatic mods out there. Since I re-discovered OFP I've installed ECP and some texture mods to improve the graphics. Un-freakin-real. The blood spatter from ECP is particularly entertaining :) Though the AI boost it provides makes things that much more difficult. There's also a forest mod (Bergher's?) that is supposed to make the vegetation crazy good. With a newer computer all this eye candy runs like a charm in an engine designed for PCs of 5 years ago.
Looking forward to Armed Assault with greedy anticipation!