I have the Dual Action gamepad, and I believe it works. I play RE5 with mouse/keyboard myself, but I have noticed that the game does on the fly transition between the two. If I randomly click my gamepad as I as i play with keyboard/mouse, all the ingame tooltip button changes from a key icon (Say image of your F key when you face a door) to the colored gamepad button circles (I don't own any of the consoles so can't say which they come from, if any)
 
So I know it detects the controller without any setup whatsoever, but I have never tried to play with it other than testing if I could aim and move, and I could. I don't know how the button mappings are, but I assume it is customizable anyway.

most new games seem to, especailly games for windows

If not, try this. It substitutes joypad input for keyboard/mouse input so you can get pretty much any game working with a pad using it as long as Windows detects the pad. It can be a pain to set up though.

" most new games seem to, especailly games for windows "

Yes it does. In the launcher there is a window where you can configure the controls for your gamepad. It can support any generic joystick or gamepad or whatever assuming drivers are installed correctly etc.
 
For other games that only support the xbox 360 controller you can use the Xbox 360 controller emulator. (which makes the game think that your gamepad is a 360 gamepad)