Need for Speed: Most Wanted (A Criterion Game)

I quite like it. Still not sold on sandbox racers, but at least it's slightly more justified here than it was in Burnout Paradise. Rather than earning new cars by winning races, you just find them parked around the city and steal them, so there's a decent (if forced) incentive for exploration. There's also events that make good use of the sandbox environment, namely the Ambush events, where you have to escape the police. Having freedom to go anywhere really helps then.

However the Ambushes are my least favourite event and I don't like the police in general. Driving to each new race is still a boring chore, although if you've done a race before you can just jump to it. There's no restart option after you finish a race, which is retarded. You have to wait for all the stats to go by and then go through the menus to get to the race again. Just have a damn Restart option as soon as the race ends. You also can't pause during a crash, which is the time you most want to pause so you can just restart.

My only other complaint is that there's no markers or anything to distinguish the other racers from regular traffic. Most of the time it's obvious because they're going as fast as you, but a few times I've tried to ram an opponent only to crash and burn because it was a normal car.

if you like the ideas but hate the awful events and would like to be able to play as a cop just get hot pursuit its infinitely better than this game.

I don't want to play as a cop. I don't want any cops in the game.