Another gem from the early 2000s was the PS2 version of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. It was the only one to be developed by the (now sadly defunct) EA Black Box; the PC, Xbox and GameCube ports, developed by EA Seattle, were nowhere near as good. And in addition to being the last game in the series to allow the player to drive Ferraris across all ports until NFS Rivals, more than a decade later, it introduced the concept of a wanted meter to the series, three years before the original Most Wanted expanded on the idea. In fact, it wouldn’t be until the next Hot Pursuit (released in 2010) that another NFS game allowed you to play as the police.
Most importantly of all, though, it nailed all the fundamentals of a great arcade racer: a wide variety of cars and tracks, a strong sense of speed, and deep, immersive gameplay that, while reasonably challenging, is seldom frustrating, not to mention pulse-pounding audio and graphics (for the era at least).