Always keeps us coming back for more
Replayability is a word that gets thrown around a lot, both as a criticism of games and as part of their development. It’s an important factor to consider — your game has to be fun enough to play and creative enough as it goes on that players will always want to have another go, regardless of how many hours they’ve put into it.
This idea of playing a game over and over is not only a testament to how well it’s designed, but can also help prolong the life, and revenue, of any particular title.
Take Twitch streaming for example — a lot of the content is from players who are going back through their favorite games, which exposes viewers to that game again. That could drive players to return to a game they had put down and all but forgotten about, or even encourage them to purchase it for the first time. It’s also a symptom of a devout fandom. When you really love a game, oftentimes you’re willing to replay it because you want to experience that world again, and DLC just means more of it.
So this word comes up all the time when we’re talking about a base game, but often DLC falls out of that conversation entirely. With all these new expansions dropping like Life is Strange: True Colors’ Wavelengths, Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye, and of course the announcement of the final Smash Ultimate fighter Sora, it got me thinking about what DLC out there is worth the replay. They deserve some love, too!
DLC itself can vary a lot in terms of what it offers the player — sometimes it’s just a cool outfit you can equip in-game, sometimes it’s a new game mode or map, and other times it’s a story expansion that bolsters the whole experience. So for the sake of our argument, I think anything that has you coming back for more is fair game.
For me, most of the time that means the story content. My number one DLC is easily The Last of Us: Left Behind. Sometimes I can find backstories a bit predictable, but I thought Left Behind built on Ellie’s character in a substantial way, while also giving us some of the most challenging and compelling gameplay of the series. Maybe I’m a bit biased as a Last of Us Part I fangirl, but this is one of the all-time greats for me.
BioShock Infinite‘s Burial at Sea is another one of my personal favorites — it draws on the main series in a fun way, the visuals are to die for, and there are some really show-stopping set pieces. It’s a fun change of pace to play as Elizabeth, especially when you get to stealth more than you usually would in a BioShock game. I honestly think Burial at Sea is a stronger story than Infinite, too, but that’s a debate for another day.
Those are just the few that I’ve played and really loved, but there are so many other DLCs out there that I know are worth the price of purchase alone. I hear Minerva’s Den from BioShock 2 is one of the best pieces of video game storytelling ever (that series really knows what it’s doing with DLC). There’s also Red Dead Redemption‘s Undead Nightmare, which brought the game new life with a horror-themed zombie mode. You can never go wrong with zombies, and having them set in the wild west? Sign me up. I’ve been meaning to pick up the Breath of the Wild Champions’ Ballad, because I hear it adds a lot of challenge to the gameplay.
So we wanna know, which of your favorite DLCs get you coming back time and time again? What is it about it that you like? Which games don’t have DLC that would make you give it another try if they did?
