These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
Broken Base: specifically, the pre-Underground fans versus the Underground fans. The massive amounts of Fan Dumb over Shift is astounding. Here's proof.
For another example, see the comments here, some of which are rated at around +10. Maybe deservedly so.
Not even Criterion is immune from this; immediate reactions after the confirmation that the next game in the series would be a reboot of Most Wanted developed by them ranged from excitement that the developers of the Burnout series and Hot Pursuit 2010 is returning for another reboot of a fan-favorite Need for Speed title to disappointment that they're not returning to Burnout just yet with expressions being made that Criterion's first NFS title wasn't as good as they hoped it would be.
Several people took to Amazon just to bash the game after it was released. Even one Amazon reviewer who gave a more objective four-star review of the 2012 game got some flak just for giving a positive review of it; at least one commenter even accused him of being a shill for EA.
Complaining about Shows You Don't Watch: Nitro received much flak for having a drastically different art style from the rest of the series, as well as for replacing Shift on the Wii.
Most Wanted 2012, just because it's not the same as Most Wanted 2005 (or even Burnout Paradise in some regard).
Character Tiers: The series as a whole tends to divide cars into "Classes," putting similar cars into different classes (for example, putting high-performance sports cars like the Lamborghini Diablo VT and the Ferrari 512TR in their own Class).
Dork Age: The series fell into one starting around Carbon (although some will claim everything post-Underground as Canon Discontinuity), and left it with Shift and Hot Pursuit 2010.
Even Better Sequel: Shift 2: Unleashed to Shift 1, specially after the 1.02 patch which corrected the jerky handling for pad users.
With Gran Turismo 5 in 2010, even though it makes little sense as they take completely opposite approaches to the racing genre. Gran Turismo 5 and Shift 2: Unleashed would make more sense.
In 2012, between Most Wanted 2012 and Forza Motorsport, more specifically with Forza Horizon.
Fridge Logic: after a few Races in Hot Pursuit 2010 as the cop you'll probably get this... The game gives you some of the fastest cars in the world complete with someseriouslyawesome looking police paint jobs and sirens (in fact you can even select what kinda sound you want your sirens to make)) that would probably still be heard amidst the noise of the engine. But the Civilians on the roads don't seem to mind at all, which can be particularly frustrating when you're driving say a Konigsegg CCX down the freeway at max speed while truck drivers or cars are moving at a gentle pace down the same freeway.
What's worse is hitting said vehicles nets a +3 penalty, and hitting the sides of the road is a +2 penalty, making some challenges nearly impossible.
Game Breaker: In Most Wanted 2012, the Everyday car class contains the Audi A1 Clubsport quattro, a pocket rocket with 496bhp and a 0-100km/h time of 3.7s.
Grand Theft Auto Effect: To be expected when you have an EA soundtrack in your game. Snoop Dogg? Spiderbait? The Buzzhorn? Bush? Hot Action Cop? Disturbed? Bitchin.
In Name Only: The series between Underground and Undercover is this to the previous games. Also, the V-Rally installments.
The Broken Base starts at Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit.
Memetic Mutation: One of Razor's lines about betting "five grand — FIVE GRAND!" against the player character in one of the opening cutscenes to Most Wanted is an inside joke at Giant Bomb that comes up whenever a NFS game is in the news.
Most Annoying Sound: "That's the green light! Push push push! Nail that first corner! Green light!" is what you'll be hearing from your spotter in Shift 2 Unleashed when you have to restart a hard race often.
Porting Disaster: While not exactly a port as such, the PlayStation 2 and Wii versions of Undercover are considered by reviewers as nothing more than just cash-ins for fans who don't have a more premium system, and therfore, the superior version. The visuals are worse than Carbon's, despite being two years younger, the framerate is (amazingly) worse than the 360/PS3 versions, and the game's landscapes aren't actually new; they're actually just various roads and highways from both Most Wanted and Carbon clobbered together. On top of that, it still suffers various problems that griped the superior versions i.e. the glaring, shiny street effect.
Even worse with the Wii version of Hot Pursuit 2010. Bear in mind how the game was praised for dragging the series out of the stale tuner street racing theme and returning to its roots. The Wii version is effectively Nitro, but with out a cartoony style and several new courses and cars from the more mainstream versions. Everything else however? Nearly identical. You can still modify the look of your car, which, given the car selection, is tragically hilarious.
The GameCube, Xbox, and PC versions of Hot Pursuit 2 all look worse than the PlayStation 2 version, despite all of them being more powerful. They also had less content and worse gameplay.
That One Boss: Earl in Most Wanted served as this for a lot of people, usually due to the aforementioned Rubber Band A.I., because at that stage of the game the cars available are not as maneuverable as they should be for his final course, so although the player will usually outpace Earl for the vast majority of it, when the player gets to the last 15% or so of the course the rubber-banding would kick in and Earl would accelerate enormously, and if the player made even the tiniest mistake in turning the ridiculously sharp corners—which would almost always happen—Earl would be going so fast that the player would find it impossible to catch up in time.
The Miami circuits in Shift 2: Unleashed are bloody awful. The kerbs on gentle curves can spin your car out with ease and even with the skill to avoid spinning you'll be fishtailing for quite a while. Even with Traction Control, Best Line and ABS, you'll still get rammed into the frapping wall from other racers bumping into you from the side.
In NFS Shift 1, the tight Tokyo tracks are problematic since the other AI racers will relentlessly push you over and almost ruin your winning chances. Not to mention The Green Hell tracks are bitches to complete with the AI racers driving aggressively. Made worse by the that that ever since Underground 1, the Rubber Band A.I. got more annoying by each installment.
They Just Didn't Care: Seems to be the case for the cop cars in Hot Pursuit 2, where they already had cars in the game of at least the same models as real police vehicles, eg, a Porsche 911 and BMW 5 series, but instead they, for whatever reason, used the American cars whenever possible; including a Corvette and 4th generation Mustang, despite neither of them ever seeing more service than the occasional DARE cars and publicity cars, and even in those cases then they were typically just a confiscated car that was repainted.
