Played a bit of Most Wanted today- thoughts.

I gave this a try at the Play Expo. The singleplayer demo I played was only one race and a portion of the map.

The race was a checkpoint race. There's takedowns in it, but no slow-down camera for it (it got a bit tiring after a while in Paradise, anyway - especially  doing a few straight after each other). The handling is great but turning requires a little bit more effort than Paradise - you can't simply glide round any corner with ease.

The checkpoints will also allow for some more diverse single-player races (the best online races were always the checkpoint ones) as opposed to "race to this location". There's also a rotating map and navigation so you don't have to work out where you're going (I think Zombie will like the sound of that - it's more like the "closed" tracks, but without the "invisible" walls).

The police also intervened in the race, but they didn't do all that much (it's probably an early race anyway). 

Overall, the racing mechanics do seem much more solid than Paradise.

As for the exploration: There seemed to be a lot more side-of the road stuff this time round and it looks like there will be plenty to explore. Billboards are still great fun to smash, and working your way to each one is great.Unfortunately, the demo was only a portion of the map (with big red "X"s to stop you) and I couldn't bring up the full map in it to see how big it is.

Overall, I was very impressed. I'm looking forward to it's release.