Thing is though Dreddz, I didn't like Dino Crisis 2 back when it came out for much the same reasons, though I doubt I could have articulated exactly why as I can now. I'll admit that it probably bothers me more now than it did then, but I still stopped playing the first time for the same reasons.
The only real reason I could guess that Dino Crisis 2 controls the way it does is because every game by the team behind it controlled that way back then. I won't fault them for trying to take a more action oriented direction, and credit where it's due, they did make some improvements over RE by not requiring you to aim up or down to hit things, run always being on, etc. I just don't think the action experiment worked out very well with the game.
And even if you consider when it came out as being an excuse for how it plays, I would still argue that there was at least one third person shooter that played far better in the form of Syphon Filter. In fact, I'd argue it's actually still quite playable even though it has certainly aged and had to work without a dual analog setup. Now I do agree with you though that back when it came out there was a lot of stuff that came out that didn't play or control well by today's standards that we were all probably pretty lenient on. I guess DC2 just wasn't one of them for me.
True enough. I completely forgot that there was a 180 degree turn button in DC2 which obviously wasn't in RE2 but was in 3 (and then mysteriously absent in Code Veronica, but that's a whole other story).