With the recent release of Price of Persia, it seems Ubisoft Montreal is starting an annual tradition of forcing reviewers to realize fundamental and upsetting truths about videogames. When a reviewer gets a chance to slam a high-profile release for anything, they cannot wait to bang out a logically disconnected criticism with their fists while they uncontrollably salivate. Flecks of spittle fly, a series of incoherent grunts roll through a studio apartment, and two pages of flimsy criticism hit the internet solidifying a journo’s reputation as a true game critic.

There’s got to be a problem in here, there just HAS to be.

This happened in 2007 with Assassin’s Creed. Gamers and journalists alike decried the game’s repetitive design, collectively patting themselves on the back that they had the capacity to find a flaw in what was actually an amazing game. Calling a game “repetitive” is a completely invalid complaint, as I have previously discussed. Repetition is a fundamental part of any game, electronic or otherwise. Assassin’s Creed forced players that hadn’t yet realized this to do so, and for some reason this caused them a considerable amount of dismay. Now, Ubisoft Montreal has forced players to realize another constant about videogames, and yet again they dislike the game for it.

Several different reviews proudly slam the game for two main reasons. First, many claim the game is too easy. Why a game’s lack of difficulty becomes innately negative is beyond me. As far as I’m concerned, I know I can beat any game given enough time. Why make me waste time dying a lot just to memorize a section or attack pattern? But that’s not the biggest point of confusion in these reviews.

Almost all the articles call out the game’s interpretive controls. For the unfamiliar, PoP uses a hefty amount of interpretation for the platforming segments. If a jump is somewhat off, the game will snap the Prince back to a safe landing. In addition, the player only needs to hit one button at each junction of a platforming segment: press A to swing from this pole, press B to swing from this ring, ect. Reviewers proclaim that this is essentially a masked QTE, with each action in the segment only having a binary pass/fail outcome.

Well, no duh.