I think it felt brilliant, actually. After a couple of minutes of experimentation, it becomes easy.

oh noez the game is going to be harder to master and more competitive online...just give it a few hours of serious play and you'll be good to go.

i really like the feel of the guns i admit i didnt at first then i got used to it
IMO it is one of those game you play for awhile it would be hard to go back to an old shooter

It's nice to have a REAL shooter again, isn't it? I say this can beat CoD4 and be best FPS this gen easily.

OP: I guess that the only realistic solutions for this could be joystick (move) + mouse/trackball (aim) or wiimote (aim) + nunchuck/joystick (move) or a pad with analog sticks and a trackball. Up until now I liked autoaim only in Tomb Raider, but it satisfied me less than manual aim anyway. While manual turret aim in I'76 was a pain in the arse, but aiming while driving would be even in reality (after finding a good control scheme it was much better in Mechwarrior 2, but then, it simulated a different kind of vehicle, a mech is more easily controlled with a stick than a car is, I should try again I'76 once I buy a wheel).

What i noticed was, Try to get the opponent in the sight with ur hip, THEN zoom in and hit. Dont do the opposite like most / I did in CoD 4 :p

Find ur target, correct your aim, Cover system , Lean , ZOOM & SHOOT! lol

Eh, if there would be mouse controls, might as well add in the keyboard.

However, that's another can of worms so lets just move on.

Mechwarrior games were best with mouse/keyboard.

I need access to all my firing groups (if I want to chain) as well as jump jets, coolant flush, and the rest.  A joystick could handle movement, but I still need buttons for all of those.

TBH I found these controlls to be better then any shooter I've played before. I went with alt 2 and the hold to zoom function on. Very similar to COD4 and the works. However, I don't see where people are getting this lag or slower moving pace. You sprint quite well. You don't need to hide(from what I've seen) It just ends up working better. The controls don't feel slow or awkward for me. I adjusted to them within moments.

It seems like things are being done a little bit differently in this game to add feeling, and people don't like it. Fine, then don't complain about lack of feel or realism in future/other FPS'.
Of course, I haven't played KZ2 yet so I can't know for sure, but that sounds like what this boils down to, if it were that horrible, I'm sure the reviews would be worse.
Not to mention the fact that a lot of people want to hate this game, or at least have major gripes with it.
Just look at the user scores for Gears 1 and 2 on Metacritic, somethings off there.