Seemed like a cool idea at first...
Road Rage is probably the best type of race in the game, especially with the open city. You drive around and there are opponents everywhere and you just ram into them to make them crash and it's just really fun.
Another cool mode is the crash mode. You can start a crash anywhere by pushing a button and your car will launch into the air. You can move your car around the open environment and crash into as many vehicles as possible.
Regular races suck though, I think they should have kept closed circuits for these races or just made it like Midnight Club where there's checkpoints to guide you through the race. Instead, there is just a start and a finish and usually the finish is all the way on the other side of the city. You have to figure out how to get there on your own and it is way too hard in my opinion, because even if you quickly glance down at your map you'll probably crash. Even if yo don't crash you could still end up taking a bad route and end up losing the race.
There are other race types like one where you have to run from a bunch of other cars trying to smash your car (I forget what this one's called). There are also time trials that you can unlock new cars from. When new cars are available you will see them crusing around the city and to unlock them you will have to take them down. There are quick drive-through shops around the city where you can paint your car and refill the boost, and also junk yards where new cars are delivered.
So, the whole open city idea seemed pretty cool at first, but it just makes most of the races too hard. Overall, I think this game probably isn't for eveyone even if you liked the previous Burnout games.