This game is pure dumb fun. You drive really fast, and you run into other cars. I have no real complaints about the core of the game. The single-player experience is fundamentally solid, but it is deeply hooked into a half-baked online experience.
You're automatically dumped into a multiplayer lobby by default, and it when the hosting player disconnects, it boots you from the game regardless of where you are in a mission. The first time a high-speed chase was thwarted by poor management of hosts, I turned off all of the multiplayer nonsense.