I love this game from a casual perspective. Hundreds of beloved makes/models to pick from, endless mechanical/aesthetic mods, massive maps with tons of things to do.
If you want to play on the highest difficulty, you'll probably be forced to use very specific cars/mods/driving styles. Luckily you can decrease the difficulty to try out others and have a good time with more variation. There are some good points regarding the atmosphere or dialog, but overall I think it does what it seems out to do well.