I spent a few hours playing this last night. It's a very hit and miss experience for me. I really can't do the time trials where you can the penalties, maybe if you have an expensive wheel but with my right thumb, steering isn't all that precise and often I'm going into the rails then back into the opposite one. My time penalties are often >30 secs. Hopeless.

Is it easier to play these games with a modern steering wheel? Are the difficulties of driving games tweaked to favour owners of these wheels?

Other game modes it's not a problem and hardly ever hit the rails. Doing quite well with the traps etc. Still prefer Split Second for sheer racing thrills but I like the off-line social competition aspect offered in Need For Speed Hot Pursuit. The Autolog system has legs even though it's more or less the same kind of thing people have been doing with web sites, posting their best times and photos. Having it built into a game is more convenient and potentially cross-platform too.

The online pass is clearly a 'value added' system to extract post sales money from the second hand game market. But it helps pay for the servers I guess, given EAs record of closing game servers down despite their turnover I wouldn't count on it being around in two years time.