If this is Syndicate, shoot me now.It's a smorgasbord of topics this week as I take on the question of "What the hell happened to modern CRPGs?" Why is everything becoming a first-person shooter game? The excrement begins to fly with the upcoming Syndicate and X-Com games. I explain why you should avoid any game "with a great story" and why I couldn't care less about Skyrim and Diablo III. I also talk about my experiences with Baldur's Gate and what I'd really like to see in future CRPGs. Hint: it ain't better narratives.

Download the mp3.

In part two of my interview with him, Sean Cooper discusses the making of Syndicate, one of the best action strategy games of the 90s and "Bullfrog's finest hour." I don't know about you, but I'd sure like to play his multiplayer version.

For the past several years, an old college friend of mine drops in around Christmas time to pay me a visit and play some games. This list of games is typically quite bizarre. My goal in this entry is to simply walk you through what we played...

Here it is, folks, the new Matt Chat--this time on one of my favorite Amiga/DOS games, Syndicate!

Just read on Joystiq that a big budget Syndicate remake is in the works. The original was a favorite of mine on the Amiga, so I'm excited to see the news. I hope they will go in the RTS direction rather than try to make an FPS out of it; it seems to me that the original model would work quite well with just a great audiovisual makeover. It might also be nice to ratchet up the number and complexity of the options you had to modify your cyborgs--and, by all means, keep the dark and brooding ambiance.