Wow. The first game has got nothing on this one. I'm very impressed, it looks like they did this one right. My demo time lasted about an hour, so I got to do quite a few things in the game just in my first play through. The biggest thing I was hoping for was a better grappling hook, and they gave us one that is perfect. You no longer have to switch to it by scrolling, just press f. You can use it to zip from one spot to another, even just using the ground.
The cars control way better now, and there was even a dune buggy that was a blast to drive. The motorcycles no longer spin out from holding left or right for more than half a second, and they are real easy to handle. Stealing a vehicle from one of the police just before yours is about to blow while driving is a lot of fun. There is a lot more open space this time to actually get some speed driving, without having to stick to the road. Also, hitting other cars and other things on the road doesn't result in your car just coming to a complete stop. One thing I didn't like was the helicopter controls. It could have just been because I was flying a huge one (don't know what it would be used for, maybe carrying things/rescues) but it flew really really slow and was very unresponsive. You also can't turn it without moving your mouse to the side of the screen, and even that doesn't work very well, because just holding it there doesn't result in a constant turn, you have to repeatedly drag your mouse left-right left-right left-right (or vice versa)
Graphically it looks pretty damn good, and ran really well with my Q6600, 8800gtx and 4gb ram. No major bugs, or anything.
I'm not sure how the size of the map compares to the first one though. They first game was HUGE, but had very little variety, so it's hard to tell. I'd say this game is probably smaller size wise, but has way more variety and content in it.
Another thing I don't really like about it is that there is one button that is assigned to l-alt. I hate having to use l-alt but I can't really find a suitable place on my keyboard to assign it since everything is basically being used already. I guess I will just have to learn to use it. Besides that, the controls are pretty good, and were quick and easy to get used to.
Didn't mean to write that much lol.