The biggest problem I have with GTAIV's "tap-to-run" is not the tapping; it's the egregious decision to use the *same* button to run as to answer your cell phone.
The effect this has is that you're running down the street and you barely hear the tone or see the animation for the phone and boom, you're having a conversation you didn't intend to have. You may have just accepted a call from your overly-emotionally-needy friends or girlfriend or took a mission call. For the friends, if you just ditch them, you decrease your friendship rating. What you have to do is accept the activity and then call back and cancel so that they don't like you less. For missions it's a similar situation.
Why should running have anything to do with accepting missions?
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is still one of my favorite games to play with friends. The split screen terrorist hunt is great, even if the enemies are about as smart as rocks with machine guns and flashbangs.
Another great example of controls acting in correlation with on screen action is Shadow of the Colossus. Every action you took in that game had to be deliberately thought about in order for the action to happen smoothly. To jump you hold the jump button and release when you have wound up enough to reach the height you need. When you climb you must hold the grip button lest you fall to your death. Stabbing the enemies requires you to, like jumping, hit the button to wind up and hit it again to thrust. The roll move you had to hold the crouch button and then hit the jump button to lunge. These controls created a feeling of being much closer to the action and is, in my opinion, why that game was so effective in everything it did.
Also, in Ico, originally you had to hold down the R1 button to hold Yorda's hand and lead her about the levels. Coupled with the smart use of vibration the act of holding the button gave a sense of connection to the character and the world.
Just simply pressing a button and then sitting back to watch the effect give the feeling that it is easy to do badass stuff, but using the controls in smart and creative ways can really enhance the connection with a game. These creative control set ups can seem obtuse at first glance but can really do a lot to create an increasingly affecting experience.
Whereas I feel like Assassin's Creed is a perfect example of the opposite end of the same (or at least a closely related) UI design principle, which is that if the character is supposed to be insanely skilled at doing something, it should require as little player skill to execute as possible. Desmond's ancestors are all incredible free-runners and combat masters, and so the player just has to tell the character where to go and who to kill and I don't have to suffer through a dozen or more hours of this "master assassin" tumbling off roofs and fucking up counter-kills as would happen if I were put fully in charge.
I don't think it feels that way at all, so I can't really sympathize. And I don't think adding more player input is the way to go - more input equals more fuckups. And an element like GTA's button mashing run would be disastrous for something that actually -is- supposed to be your primary means and rate of getting around the game. As it is, Assassin's Creed already gives me hand cramps if I play for long sessions.
