After so thoroughly enjoying the PS3 edition of Prince of Persia, my wife and I finally decided to pop for the PS2 games from the same series. After all, we reasoned, the same folks made them so they can’t be that bad, can they?

Well, no. And maybe.

Here’s what I mean. While I’m sure it’s the most archaic of the trilogy, I felt obligated to start the PS2 trilogy at the beginning, with Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. The controls are clunkier and less responsive, the graphics are simpler and that is all to be expected, right? True… even with the best wrinkle creams, this is still an old game. Ancient, in gamer years.

But my main pet peeve thus far is the difficulty with which one must wrestle to do a simple move: jumping wall-to-wall to make the prince climb an otherwise-unscaleable wall. It’s a key move and ought to be easy… R1 to run up the wall initially, then hit X to jump wall-to-wall until you reach the top.

Except it’s not that simple and there’s no good FAQ to tell you the trick to it. And since the first area where this skill is needed comes within the first hour of gameplay… yeah, that sucks. I hope Warrior Within and The Two Thrones are better-designed… if I ever get past Sands of Time, that is…