As for the games they went pretty junk after underground, still have porsche unleashed with my 2.5 boxster The one game that was good later on was the hot pursuit in 2010.
All of the NFS series sucked after the first one IMO
(road & track version)....they got more and more arcade like as they went. NFSPU was tolerable but I gave up on the series after hot pursuit II (?) I think. Eventually found GTR2 and it is everything you could want except for the driving on the street part. The movie doesn't really interest me either.