Welcome to Respawning’s Games Club! The purpose of this is to get a bunch of us together once a week, to allow us the chance to chat shit about whatever takes our fancy in the world of video games and discuss what we’re currently playing.
With Destiny 2 now free on PlayStation Plus, and the new Forsaken expansion recently announced, we decided to take a look at those mammoth DLC packs that expanded our favourite game worlds like nothing else could!
Salman
Oh boy, when it comes to expansions there is only one game that’s been on my mind lately and that’s Hollow Knight. I think the way they handle their expansions is so great especially the latest one Godmaster (Expect a review of that soon) but I’m gonna stop blowing Hollow Knight like it’s my sugar daddy for one hot minute and talk about some other expansions. Like Blood Dragon. If you have not played Far Cry Blood Dragon I am so sorry you haven’t even begun your life yet. It’s just so good shut up and play it. The other expansion I absolutely love is Undead Nightmare for Red Dead Redemption. Yea why not, let’s just throw in a completely new story in there and blow everyone’s minds again. Yea that’s it play those and play Hollow Knight.
Clarice
For me, the staple of large-scale expansions has always been Borderlands – Pick a game in the series. Any game. Borderlands 1? Well you’ve got The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, and Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution – Borderlands 2? You’ve got Captain Scarlett and her Pirate’s Booty, Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage, Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt and the legendary Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep – Borderlands the Pre-Sequel? You’ve got the Shock Drop Slaughter Pit, Holodome Onslaught and Claptastic Voyage – All of these are major, major expansions, and all bring their own flavour of varied content to their respective games whilst introducing brand new rare guns, shields and loot, often with their own unique effects.
Usually with Borderlands, you can expect their larger expansions to run you, with a 100% playthrough, over 10 hours of content a piece, and, whilst it may get repetitive or tedious, boy does it improve their respective base games by a mile. Oddly enough, my favourite expansion for Borderlands lies within Borderlands 2, specifically, with the Son of Crawmerax DLC – Just how it explores such a beautiful environment and is so varied from the rest of the game makes the whole experience feel so fresh.
Joe
Personally my life’s always been stuck in map pack DLCs, from COD to Halo, I’ve always bought into the newest maps to slay my opponents in… But with more modern games, I feel that the age of the DLC map pack is dying, and the age of expansions are being born – My favourite example of expansions rather than flat DLCs is with The Elder Scrolls – Specifically with Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim – These games alone immerse you into their worlds, so to be introduced into a whole new section otherwise unexplored is amazing to me – I live for the day we get an amazing Elder Scrolls game and get the rest of Tamriel unlocked slowly with mega-expansions… But for now, what we have at the moment will suffice.