In the 90's I worked for RadioShack and had the POS system converted to play Doom when it was not busy in the store. Sweet! A 5 station network to play games on....

 

I had the same problem with Halo Joe, I could not figure out the thumbsticks for the life of me. My friend would try to get me to play and I ran around the map looking either at the floor or the sky, and I was incredibly lucky to score a kill at all, let alone go on a "killing spree" or anything cool.

Now, I play Call of Duty 4 on my PS3. Same type of controls (I even have my PS3 controllers set to "default flipped" so I can go back and forth between PS3 and 360 and not suck) but I now constantly place in the top 3 on Team Deathmatches.

So, I guess my point is - practice makes perfect. I never got into Halo but I love CoD4, so I made myself learn the controls. I'm at Brigadier General after about 3 weeks of playing.