I use a wired 360 controller for driving and mouse/keyboard for on foot.
Works well for me.
And game runs well on my rig, i enabled V-sync(i hate tearing) , and changed the aniso to 16x and texture filtering to high quality in the Nvidia control panel....game looks fine to me and runs well.
Using highest texture settings in game as well, along with the other draw/shadow/detail distance settings the game set when i benched it at 1920x1200.
Of course my rig is a bit above minimum specs.
Vista 64
Q6600 @3.4ghz
8gb DDR2 1000
1gb GTX 280
300gb Velociraptor
640gb WD AAKS
X-fi
Now, having to start and run two other programs to run the game, just plain sucks, and im sure that contributes to the games poor overall performance on some systems.
Anyway, it runs well, and looks great, and has been stable for me with no crashes, slowdowns or hiccups....so i guess i cant complain too much.
Luckily when i got my new Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P mobo, i decided to put my q6600 back in and moved my e8400 to my backup pc, othwerwise, i'd probably be really bashing the games performance right now.