I both understand and empathize with Ests complaints, but there /is/ a valid reason for the strict controls. This game is meant to freak you out. When you play Devil May Cry, and you can leap 30 feet in the air, run-n-gun, perform combos, and do powerslides/shifts at superspeeds... there's certainly a lot of tension, but it's action-themed tension. In the RE games it's always been about fear... psychological tension. One of the reasons the controls weren't set up to be super-responsive is because you're meant to get into these situations where you're yelling "FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK" as 5 zombies/villagers are bearing down on you, and you don't have the ability to do some action-star move to get out of their way.
And I know that strafing isn't such a big deal... it could've been implemented effectively in RE4, no doubt... but the reason the controls seem clunky, in an age of games that can have insanely responsive controls (God of War comes to mind) is to create that tension. It works, too. RE4 was one hell of a good game!