It's a Burnout game.
 
I hope that one day the series gets handed to a developer that knows how to make a proper NFS game. If I wanted a racing game with powers and what not, I'd play Blur. Free roam mode is boring and pointless. Autolog is fun for about 5 minutes. Who cares if my "friend" beat my time? I don't. Crashing should have been left in the Burnout series. Oh wait, this is that game, isn't it? As you can clearly  tell, I didn't like the game. I know I'm in the minority, but I don't care.  
 
What do you think of this game?

I like the game, other than the rubber band A.I. that makes some races seem near impossible. But I dunno, I guess I like it because it's a Burnout game, and I don't like Need For Speed games. 
 
My two favorite Need for Speed games are this one and Shift. Which are nothing at all like the previous Need for Speed games. Which means most of them pretty much suck.

I don't really care if it is NFS or not, I just care that it is my favorite racing AND my favorite multiplayer game since forever.

I just don't see how its possible for anybody who would visit a game website to hate Burnout. I can appreciate wanting something different out of a NFS game, but dude...Burnout is fucking awesome. What exactly did you not like about it?

The style of races seemed like Hot Pursuit or Most Wanted races.  I don't see the problem.

It's Road Rash with cars, but it's pretty rad online.

If it were a Need for Speed game it would be shitty. If being not shitty makes it Burnout, I'll take it.

" If it were a Need for Speed game it would be shitty. If being not shitty makes it Burnout, I'll take it. "

Right, because Need For Speed has never dealt in sometimes ridiculous arcade racing.  What's your next act - telling us that Hot Pursuit 2 and Most Wanted aren't Need For Speed games either. 
 
Also, it's a pretty different game from the last couple Burnouts.

Considering Burnout games are consistently better than Need for Speed games, you seem to be giving it quite high praise.

If turning it into Burnout makes it better (as I feel it did in this case), I'll be a happy customer.

No way, Burnout is horrible and this isn't.

Oh noes.

Agreed. The game has its merits, but its relation to the need for speed franchise is in name only. 
 
That's not a bad thing considering the amount of terrible games in the nfs franchise, but it was also disappointing considering it takes nothing from the few great games. It is basically burnout with licensed cars and cops. 
 
 I hate it and love it equally.

The Need for Speed name doesn't mean anything. It never did. NFS has gone through so many different styles of gameplay. It's just a brand that EA slaps on car games to make them sell better. A lot of people associate Need For Speed with games like Underground or Hot Pursuit because they are the good NFS games in recent memory, but that franchise has gone through so many different variations, all "Need for Speed" actually means is "cars".

It's feel is very similar to NFS: Hot Pursuit 2 aside from the car weapons (Cops still called in copters, road blocks etc in HP2). 
 
Which was my favorite NFS by the way. The others that came after that just aren't that great. 
 
The Criterion version feels like it is HP3 (although it is confusingly just called HP), it has time-trials, pursuit time-trials, regular races and pursuit races.    
 
I just wish they had an Autumn area that I loved from HP2 though the Snow area makes it up.

As someone who started playing NFS with 2... this feels like an NFS game. Just not any of the shitty Underground, Undercover, Carbon junk you might be used to, it's a return to the classic NFS style. The game feels a lot like the other Hot Pursuit entries, and is very consistant with their style and feel. Even with the world map being exactly like Burnout 3's, the crashes being entirely awesome, and the addition of boost, the game is entirely an NFS game, I have no idea what you are talking about. 

i like the game but that is because i love burnout and have never really liked a need for speed game 
but i agree 
let criterion make burnout  and let whoever makes need for speed nowadays make that