It is really awkward, but they did it that way for a reason. In Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit, their last game, they had a more normal movement control. However, when the camera angle changed, it was often disorienting since the direction you were pressing on the stick might have been a different direction than the one you were traveling in after the change.

So their solution was to have R2 make you 'walk forward', which would be 'walk forward' no matter how many camera changes there are. Kind of like a racing game, except really really slow. As far as fixing that particular issue from Indigo Prophecy, I prefer it in Heavy Rain. So yes, it is not optimal or intuitive, but it's better than what they had before.

The right stick motions is also something that I've been exposed to a lot in games. Indigo Prophecy did it some, but I've used it more extensively in EA's sports games. Fight Night, Fifa, Skate (not a sport, but definitely complex right-stick motions).

As far as boringness, well, this game I imagine will require some patience in spots. A lot of the game I'm sure is going to be about information gathering and revealing the story through clues you find. For the demo, I imagine they didn't want to give away too much, so they gave us something that might not be crucially important to the plot. More as a kind of demonstration of their sci-fi goggles than a representation of the game as a whole.