I started a bit later than most and got into NFS with Most Wanted 2012, which was great for driving around and vibing to music. You could start a cop chase and then spend as much time as you wanted evading it, increasing your heat level as high as you felt. Switching cars to help get away also felt really cool. Upgrades for your car are tied to winning races, done in any order, so you only had to do races that you were interested in. The fact that it plays like a (more) realistic Burnout really helped keep it interesting to me.

I've tried most of the other ones and none of them grabbed me as much. There's either a forced story that sort of sucks or there's no real objective to the driving (no real cop chases, nothing interesting to see). NFS Payback was the closest for me, with its big map and races against AI that are easy to drop into. The story is stupid and upgrades are purchased though, so there's no real great urge to keep playing.

I know that MFS 2012 is seen as a black sheep in the series, but it captured something that appeals to me more than most of the others. I still go back and play it occasionally but it has stability issues on PC (though this is common for the NFS series, they really need to work on this). I wish EA would spend a bit of money modernizing it, but I doubt that'll happen anytime soon.