Not true at all. I go to a number of forums besides this one including the hated ones (Gamefaqs, IGN, etc.). My friends (who have the game already since they're in America) also have commented on the pointer controls. There hasn't been much about here, though, which I find strange. After chatting with a few more people, I pretty much have my answer, so there's no real point in bothering with it now.
That said, I've already paid for the game, it just hasn't arrived yet. I'm looking forward to going through the single player game. Looks like a lot of fun and apparently the IR works pretty well in that mode. It's online where it supposedly has a problem. Even so, I'm not so naive to not try it myself to see if the comments about have any weight, so I'm gonna try playing online via IR myself.