Well, I played some this morning. I mostly liked it. It certainly has a Burnout Paradise feel to it. One thing that really irritated me is that after a few races I had over 60,000 points and was trying to track down my first Most Wanted racer. I checked Autolog for a New Challenge, it said I had to enter my online code. So I figured, why not and entered it. After i finished redeeming the code, I was racing again with 21,000 points. I don't know what happened. I assumed it saved after races and such, but I guess not. Sucks.

Also, is there any way to restart or exit a race after you start it, because I wasn't able to find one. In Paradise, you just stopped for a bit, but that doesn't work here.

Pressing right on the d-pad brings up the quick change menu. I believe there's retry and quit options in there while a race is active.

Just hit 'start' and restart should be an option.

I finished the "story" in single player (beat all the most wanted cars). It definitely was NOT as hard as it seemed at first. Like I said earlier, if you upgrade a car fully, the most wanted races are pretty easy. Now it's on to billboard and gate smashing time!

Which car did you use? I like the Porsche best so far but got absolutely smoked in my first Most Wanted race.

It's not.

Yes, that actually does work. I didn't see the Easy Drive option during racing and just assumed it was disabled.

BTW : my disappearing XP from yesterday came back when I played again. Must be something to do with syncing with Autolog, which seems to be a very problematic experience right now.

I used the Porsche to beat all the Most Wanted races up to and including #3 (which is the Bugatti Veyron). Once I knocked the Bugatti out, I switched to that because that car is stupid fast. I used the Bugatti to finish up #2 and #1.

But the Porsche is good enough to beat the Bugatti, so I probably could've used it all the way to the top. Make sure it's fully upgraded. That's important. It makes a big difference. Especially with re-inflate tires. I had trouble with the very first Most Wanted race too... until I unlocked all the upgrades. After that, the only Most Wanted race I had to attempt more than once was the Bugatti one. But I knocked him out on my second attempt.

I just used the restart option by pressing Start. It's most definitely there. You also have options to restart last race or leave the race you are in.

Played this for a few hours so far. Some events are frustratingly hard. Some are super easy. The map feels way smaller than Burnout Paradise.

I've been restarting events by pressing Start as well, either during the race or after it ends. I also like that you CAN start an event without having to be at the right spot, by using the menu.

Edit: shit. So after all that, I "installed" the game on my 360. Now when i start the game, it just sits at the loading screen forever. This sucks.

I agree about the size of the town. It's pretty, but it's very small and I get déjà vu all the time, mostly because I keep driving past the same places. They don't have all those country back roads like Paradise, right? Maybe I haven't been to the edge of the map but I haven't seen much so far.

I spent a bunch more time with this game yesterday and now I'm totally digging it. I upgraded my Porsche to a decent degree and have taken out the first two MW racers. I still hate the police though as they are relentless and I've yet to escape anything above a 3 wanted level.

From what I have read, the map is larger in a vertical sense with more underground areas than Paradise.

Looking forward to starting this today. LOVED Revenge and Paradise.

I'm liking it so far. Not as much as Burnout Paradise but its more of what I was hoping Hot Pursuit would be. I thought the cop chases in Hot Pursuit were great but there weren't enough of them whereas in the new Most Wanted the cops are a constant presence. The map is a bit weak though as far as variety of areas compared to Burnout. I think most of the city areas and the highways look the same with not enough difference to know where you are while going 150MPH with cops chasing your tail.

I think there's something extremely dishonest and unrealistic about cops who sit side by side on the side of the road and watch 7 NPC racers speed by without budging, but rush into action and start setting up roadblocks when you finally cross their line of sight.

I like it as well, but I will get rid of it sooner than later. Just not enough to hold my interest.

How about them driving on the wrong side of the highway into oncoming traffic to slam into you head on? That's a little ridiculous. Or when you're doing 190+MPH and there's a cop right on your ass the whole time (in a SUV-type vehicle no less). Unrealistic for sure, but whatever... It's a video game. I actually enjoy smashing into them and taking them out. They never really gave me that much of a problem when I was working my way up the most wanted list.

For those that have trouble losing the wanted level, if you get out of the "hot zone" circle and start the cooldown process, quickly find a place to stop the car and press L3 (not sure if that's a button on Xbox, but it's pushing in the left analog stick on PS3). That shuts off the motor and the cooldown meter drops about 10x faster than the normal rate. Makes it much easier to evade the pursuit. If you continue to drive around, the meter drops much slower and there's a good chance you'll randomly come across another cop and start the whole chase all over again.

I never asked for realism in an arcade racer but even I was laughing when I ran over spike strips and slowed down to 20mph and the cops still didn't shut me down. They just kept driving along side me and ramming me the whole time until I was able to drive through a repair shop to fix the tires. Then I was able to out drive them again.

I've fucking had it with this game. I attempted two different "medium" races today about 30 times each and failed over and over. In one I was attempting to earn the aero body for my pimped out Porsche but failed to hit 120mph as my average speed... My top speed of 119.9 couldn't quite fucking cut it. Fuck you NFS!!!

There's one of those Speed Run races later on that can only be done with the Bugatti Veyron (most wanted #3) or the Koenigsegg Agera (most wanted #1). The avg speed has to be 155 mph for gold. It includes an off road section which slows you down dramatically... and the pursuit level is 6 the entire time. It's incredibly difficult. It's the ONLY race I have left for the "Second is Nothing" trophy/achievement. I've probably attempted it 50 times. Hardest race in the game for me, by far.

For the race you're stuck on Rob, make sure you get the pro upgrades for tires, nitrous, long gear (?), and chassis. It makes it a bit easier.

Thanks. One minute after my rant I switched from long gears to short gears to achieve a higher speed --- My very next run was 120mph. Other races have become extremely difficult now. I need to get the run flat tires by "drifting" for 5000 yards. I have no idea how to drift and the in-game manual doesn't say a damn thing about it.

Accelerate into the turn, turn , feather the brakes lightly while maitaining the turn.

Find a big open area, start making left turns and then tap the X button to get your car in a slide. Keep holding the gas while steering left, and you'll drift for as long as you can maintain it.

Thanks guys. I also discovered that pressing down on the left thumbstick turns your car off --- it helps you lose Heat faster.

Yup. One of the best places to do this is at the hangar. It's off the highway in the northeast part of the map. It has a bunch of busted up planes all over the place. But there is a big enough area in the middle where you can drift around in a big circle for as long as you want. Very easy to get 5000yds without ever taking your finger off the gas.