Hey Matt -

Really enjoyed this one. I love Syndicate. I bought it new for PC in 1993. With Syndicate comes a short story.

I was running what I believe was a 486 at the time. That isn't as important as the fact I had 4 MB of RAM. Syndicate needed 3 MB of EMS memory, or it would not run. It was frustrating because no matter how many modifications I made to config.sys, I could not squeeze out the full 3 MB of EMS. A friend down the street also had 4 MB of RAM, but he could pull off the 3 MB of EMS. That was quite frustrating. It was because of this that I actually upgraded my computer to 8 MB of RAM. Wow! Double the RAM just to play Syndicate! SIMM RAM was banked in 4s. I had 8 total slots - 4 had 1 MB modules and the remaining 4 were empty. Add 4 more 1 MB modules, and Syndicate was kicking.

Syndicate certainly has its share of violence. That said, the people are so small (especially on a 14 inch monitor), it didn't really seem to be that graphic. There was one particular thing you could do in the game that I found quite amusing despite how morbid it was. One of the weapons you could acquire was a flamethrower. It wasn't really that functional due to the short range it had, but it was fun to use. When you used it on another human, he would light up in this plume of fire & run around screaming. Eventually the fire would go out, and the charred, skeletal remains would drop to its knees and then fall into a pile. To someone that hasn't played the game, this probably sounds quite disturbing. Heck - it probably is. However again - the graphics were so small, this particular situation was actually rather funny. Sadistic? Perhaps. I would probably pull the "it's just a game" card to explain myself. Others in 1993 might feel the game needs to be banned. I believe it had a rating on the box. It was before the ESRB, I believe.

Syndicate had a few missions that were difficult, but these were abolutely NOTHING when compared to the expansion "American Revolt." If you really wanted a challenge, you had to play the expansion. I remember loading that thing up and immediately having to sit up in my chair and think through the missions. Sometimes I would load, fail, and re-load a mission over and over just to figure out how I wanted to plan for it. When I finally finished American Revolt, I felt quite a sense of accomplishment.

I should probably mention the sequel - Syndicate Wars. I almost used the phrase "took advantage of 3D" to begin to describe the game, however it looked terrible. Gameplay was quite boring. I believe it came out in 1996. I remember playing a demo and thinking, "this is horrible." I never acquired the full game, and I still do not have an interest in picking it up. I would like to see another Syndicate game. I wonder what platforms would be used. I would have to vote PC on this one. I have played the game on my 3DO and was skeptical before I put it in the system. This is a mouse-based game. Period. I can't see it any other way. RTS games are pretty much a computer-based affair. I see no reason why an action-based strategy game ("RTAS?") could make it as a gamepad game.

Syndicate is supposedly either close to having a new game or there is one in the works. It sounds like there have been several in-house demos over the years, but nobody has really nailed down the essence of the original game. I hope that if (or when) they do finally get a game together that they feel is workable that it will have the same pacing and feel of the original game. I think one thing that Syndicate had that really helped it was the music. Not an award-winning orchestral theme set or something like that - just a synthesized, bassy type of sound that kept your heart going.

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As for future Matt Chats - I think you have a good list there, Matt.
1:Shenmue deserves mention (I think you meant "Dreamcast" instead of DS) as it created quite a fun atmosphere.
2:Metal Gear Solid for PSX is great - I only first played it nearly 10 years after its release, and I absolutely loved it. The character development was excellent, and I think the best STYLE points have to go to the character development and voice acting that came to the gamer via the codec screen. There was just something cozy about it. The 2D artwork that was animated helped enhance it, and the move to a 3D codec in MGS2 took away from the codec conversations (although MGS2 is a different beast)
3:Zork seems like an obvious one that everyone should know about. I haven't played it all the way through, but I own it along with Zork II and III for C64
4: Diablo is a no-brainer.
5: I am currently playing Legacy of the Ancients for the first time on real C64 hardware. Hearing about this would be relevant (so long as their are no spoilers). Haha.