This game, the original Syndicate, is from 1993 and it's bloody addictive.

It's produced by Peter Molyneux, I mean that blabber-mouth that wanted to sell us Fable telling us it would have trees growing in real time??? WTF?

My team just got wiped out by some guard with a flamethrower and I just want to replay that level again, again and again.
I even decided to let the people rebel, just to repeat some levels with better equipment later.

Why does my attention span for modern games lasts about 20 minutes (in the best case) while I keep coming back to this game, playing it over and over again.

It's repetitive, ugly as hell, scripted like a bad movie and should get utterly boring within hours...
Well it never gets old...
Grab a Gauss-Canon and some adrelanine boost, and Orgasmo-mesmero-tron and let's get this party started!

Did you ever play Tie Fighter? ;D

Games like this are the reason why people beveled him again and again.
He created some of the most innovative and addicting games of it's time (RIP Bullfrog).

Then he got completely George Lucas and with complete control his games suffered.
Maybe he had the spark of creativity. But he also needed other people to challenge his ideas and bring him back to earth.

He was also one of the major proponent of streamlining games and game UIs.
That was one of the reasons why his games where so good. In the dos age you often fought the Game UI as much as your opponents. But then he gridded that philosophy in the ground and we ended with games like Curiosity or Godus.