I’m revisiting Underground 2 right now. I’m not an NFS connoisseur by any means, but it’s amazing to me how well it holds up. Maybe it’s just nostalgia but I love the atmosphere.
Somehow I don't think I've ever played a NFS game. Hot Pursuit Remastered is one of the free PS Plus games this month so I will remedy this personal failure.
Hot Pursuit 2 will always be one of, if not my number 1 video game of all time. As recently as a couple years ago I would fire up the PS2 and play through it to near completion. Unfortunately, left my PS2 and my NFSHP2 copy at an ex girlfriends house and it ended up in a Goodwill box (mistakenly not maliciously I should say)
After that, High Stakes and HP1 will always hold a special place in my heart as one of the reasons I ever got into cars and video games at all
It also seems to be the most refined from EA Canada. Eden did great with Porsche 2000. Any Black Box era game eats Criterion or Ghost releases, specially with game direction (with some exceptions). It's so difficult to chose a game from them because even when flawed, they are quite special.
Past that, I think NFS peaked with Hot Pursuit 2010. And on a side note, I think SMS never did a greater game than Shift 2.
I forgot another favorite NFS game of mine that I owned back in 2012-2018, Need For Speed: The Run. I sold my ps3 in 2018, I owned one that could play ps2 and ps3 games.