Burnout 3 is still, in my opinion, one of the best arcade-y racing games out there. It's a game series that realized that smashing your car - which happens more often than not in any racing - should be just as fun as the visceral rush of driving really fast and burning past your opponents. The sound design was top notch and really added to the sense of speed and excitement.
Later games in the series didn't add much, except maybe frustrations: I found Revenge to be a bit frustrating in that rear-ending non-competitor cars caused a crashed instead of just shoving the card out of the way, and Burnout Paradise's open world, while cool, made replaying failed missions troublesome as you had to drive back to the mission's start point every time.
