Just gonna copy and paste what I wrote in the perfect game thread and then elaborate further.
To this day, I consider this the pinnacle of video games. You have insane amounts of content, a year of FREE updates that added substantial amounts of content like motorcycles, day/night cycle, constant QOL updates with updated interface every few months, and when they finally started charging for stuff, they charged for cool shit like classic movie cars and a new area of the map that essentially adds a new campaign. You can create your own races. Competitive events are fun as hell and don't all revolve around racing, you have stunt competitions, road rage (which was basically a violent tag your it with cars) and other modes. You have imo, perfect car handling while still maintaining a noticeable control difference between cars. Different boost styles reward different styles of play. They were among the first devs to add custom soundtrack and screenshot support to the PS3. They had an in-game messaging system you could access long before in-game XMB was a thing. Easy Drive remains the most seamless and innovative menu system ever, with true seamless online/offline switching, music track switching and restarting races ALL without having to stop your car or see a load screen. Open ended racing rewards map exploration. Collectables help the player learn shortcuts and the like all across the map. Online cooperative challenges were not only the most fun I've had in video games, but helped me at least to foster what has become lifelong friendships. When my friend and I were stuck on DSL, this was the only game that worked FLAWLESSLY. No lag, no disconnects, crystal clear voice chat, a testament to the game's online infrastructure. They had what felt like at the time, infinite paint combinations for most cars, allowing you to make your car truly your own. This was everything modern gaming COULD be. Gaming Perfection. Fuck the haters.
Also, everything I just listed is just what made it into the game, read up on what got cut, and I'll leave you something to imagine.
I also would like to say, this game felt more about driving than racing, which might be why it has such vocal haters, but I feel this worked to the game's advantage. I seriously want to be buried with my PS3 copy in my hands.
There were tears in my eyes when I saw this headline... never thought EA would be bright enough to do anything with burnout again.
Bummer 
