The crtiical urge comes early.

For children, their first words are inevatbly expressions of need and identity: "mama", "daddy" and "kitty". But soon, within the first 10 words, comes the "no."

Even a baby has a critical urge. They know what they like and they know when someone tries to put something they don't want down their throat.

Over time people and their criticism matures. Like many urges, however, the critical urge remains mired in the conflicted emotional adolescent world. Rarely do we find the need to raise our criticism above more articulate versions of "I liked it it" or "I didn't like it", the infantile "no".

But some of us can't take no for an answer. We think what whether we like or dislike something is a starting point for asking "why?" Intentionally or otherwise, we turn into critics. We figure if something means something to us, we should be able to describe it in terms that will make it mean something to others. And slowly, the critic becomes the meta-author, the creator of artifacts about artifacts.

In this spirit I have begun to try and push my own critical writing forward, to try to do more than just review, to support my point of view with isnight and to rise to criticism--to say something that has the chance to connect universally.

And since I'm an entertainment journalist at heart, I figure, "why should criticism be dull?" So, I try to make things interesting.

To that end I've opened a new topic on the site: Criticical Writing. Call them reviews if you want. But hold me to the desire to make these reviews about more than good game/bad game.