it was great but personally I thought San Andreas was a massive step up, Vice City's car control and the fact that you still could not swim, again great but not as great as San Andreas.
I personally didn't struggle with any controls, most complain about the helicopter, but I loved that too, a person just had to take the time to set up the controls correctly. For my Helicopters I used my WASD in combination with 8456 on the number pad, (up arrow, down arrow, left arrow, right arrow) then to fire, spacebar, this allows you to feel centered while kicking ass and making megabucks, I was good with the helicopter, I could go from a 5 star wanted level to none under a minute with ease, snatching the badges in hard to reach places without even having to leave the helicopter.
Anyways my controls setup made me rather good, that when Battlefield Bad company 2 released, the heli's were child's play to adopt, as I just had to bring that experience over. Everyone wanted me as the pilot, I just got annoyed as they couldn't hit shit while I was avoiding everything. lol
I think the big problem for people, is that they didn't understand, to make the helicopter fly as you should, you need 8 buttons to master the collective pitch control, throttle control, antitorque control, and cyclic pitch control.
Anyways, rambling over, signing off, for now...