I was pleasantly surprised by this. The day and night racing offer a lot of variation in gameplay. Cop chases are a tad difficult at the start til you get your car levelled up.
The customisation options are insane and very detailed, to such a ridiculous degree where there are 4 different settings to tune your exhaust noise! Also most of the environment destructible!
As a completionist, the one this I appreciate the most is this game's approach to collectables. When you're nearing the location of one, it gets added to the map so you don't have to waste too much time on those (the game is meant to be more focused around driving so that's a bonus). Each one is then marked clearly on the map if you've completed it or not, makes collecting them a lot easier to keep track cuz there are advantages to collecting them, like rep bonuses, new parts etc.
All in all, I recommend this Need for Speed over all others really. There are some neat little touches to tie over the gameplay with other sections of the game, like the start sequence for each race, your car in the cutscene reacts to when you rev your engine! and when you pause the game, that screen shows the realtime damage of the car!