Ken Levine, mastermind behind Bioshock, System Shock and Freedom Force, has written an interesting article wherein he discusses several influential games that influenced his life. Most notable is his admission that the original Legend of Zelda ruined his romantic relationship.

From RockPaperShotgun:

After I graduated from college, I moved to an apartment San Francisco with first super-serious girlfriend. She was a couple of years younger than me, so at the end of the summer, she was set to go back to school. On our last day together in San Fran, I for some reason picked up The Legend of Zelda. As she stood by waiting for some romantic gesture to happen on our last day living together, she was instead treated to watching me obsessively plow through Hyrule for around 15 hours. By the time the cab showed up to take her to the airport, I realized if I had any hope of keeping her as my girlfriend, it was time to shut off the NES.

Needless to say, we didn’t spend the next summer together.

Ken goes on to discuss the Atari classic Adventure, the classic Castle Wolfenstein and Ultima Underworld.

It’s obvious when embargoes are lifted in the game industry, as every videogame site under the sun suddenly posts the same derivative article at approximately the same time. Embargoes are a scourge, a powerplay by the P.R. department handling a videogame, which serves no positive purpose for anyone involved. It dillutes the media for gaming sites and compresses the exposure of a game into a single day.

I mean, how many BioShock 2 previews do we need posted on a single day? You’d think a publisher would want the exposure spread out over time, keeping the brand in your head up till the day of release, but no. P.R. hacks think it best that previews all hit on the same day. Worse, the various sites are more than willing to play along, willingly giving up whatever power they may have had.

Let’s take a gander at which sites played the embargo game today, offering up essentially the same content as everyone else:

Wired: First Look: BioShock 2 Takes Bold Trip to Rapture

Loot Ninja:  Eyes-On Preview: BioShock 2

CVG: BioShock: Behind the Scenes

Worthplaying: Preview – BioShock 2

Gamespy: Thrills, Drills, and Blood Spills in Rapture

ShackNews: BioShock 2 Impressions: Seeing and Dreaming

Kotaku: BioShock 2 Impressions: Spoilers? What Spoilers?

Destructoid: Preview: BioShock 2

G4TV: BioShock 2 First Impressions

Escapist Magazine: BioShock 2 Preview

Joystiq: Joystiq Impressions: BioShock 2

Good work, boys.

I thought the first BioShock was pretty lame in terms of gameplay design, so I’m hoping BioShock 2 rights the wrongs of the original and actually delivers on its promises.  My helpful advice would be: figure out some way to dispense weapons other than a vending machine, okay? The idea that people just walk up to a vending machine and buy weapons in an underwater “utopia” is, frankly, the epitome of lazy design. It ranks up there with finding med-kits in crates.